


Breathe

by shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Eventual MCD, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Natural Disasters, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Team as Family, Tragedy, semi-happy ending I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 43,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod/pseuds/shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod
Summary: Clint, Steve, and Natasha are prepared for almost anything. Almost. When a tsunami strikes, they're all separated, injured, and lost. With no way to contact each other, the chances of all three of them making it out together and alive seem slim. However, they are the Avengers, and slim odds never stopped them before.
Comments: 30
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally moving this one over from my fan fiction account. I'm hoping to get a chapter up every few days as I edit and polish what I had written before. This story takes place before Age of Ultron. Just as a warning, there is a character death, but not until about halfway through. You'll see it coming, and I'll change the tags accordingly after the chapter has passed. The story does end on a bittersweet note, not entirely hopeless, it just takes a lot to get everyone there. Hope you guys enjoy!

As he took in the view from the fifth floor, lights went out all over the city. The once bright and bustling landscape was now pitch dark. Screams sounded over cars crashing and people running. Clint looked for a few more seconds, hoping to see the lights go back on. Maybe someone had tripped a wire or something. A city-wide electrical wire…?

As the screaming continued, he shook his head and went back inside the hotel room, closing the door to the balcony as he did. “Something’s going on out there,”he announced. The lights in the room had gone out too, but his vision had adjusted enough so that he could make out what was in front of him. Natasha was on the bed, hitting the remote with her hand in a half-hearted attempt to get it to turn the television on. Steve stumbled out of the shower, pulling on a shirt and a pair of jeans. His hair was still wet and there was shampoo in parts of it.

“Lights went off in the bathroom,”Steve said as Clint eyed his hair. He grabbed a towel and started to scrub it dry.

“Lights, and power, went out everywhere. It’s pitch black outside,”Clint replied as Natasha swung her legs off the bed and stood up.

They were staying at a hotel in the Philippines, taking a two day break before heading back to SHIELD. The mission had been completed sooner than expected and Fury had graciously given them two days to themselves.

“Let’s find out what’s going on. Maybe then we can get the television up and running again,”Natasha muttered and tossed Steve his jacket. He strapped his shield on underneath it, as he never went anywhere without it, and then shrugged the brown jacket on. “You too, flyboy. You always complain about getting cold.”

Clint chuckled and took his jacket from the closet. Natasha put a few more weapons on her person and pulled on a pair of boots. Clint secured a gun, seeing as a bow was slightly conspicuous for a power outage. He followed Steve and Natasha out of the hotel room and down the stairs to the lobby, where people were crowded. “What’s going on?”he asked to one of the workers.

She shrugged and said, “we’re working on it, but all of our systems are down. It’s possible something happened off the coast, but the alarms would have sounded. Check down by the power main.”Clint nodded and reported back to his other two friends.

“The one mission we don’t bring night vision googles,”Natasha muttered, pushing her way past the crowd of people and out onto the dark street.

“You’re practically half cat, with the way you flip around and kill things. You’re telling me that you can’t see in the dark?”Clint joked. He muttered an ‘ow’two seconds later after Natasha punched him playfully in the arm.

“Come on,”pushed Steve from up ahead a few paces. “The faster we get to the power main, the faster we find out what’s going…”he trailed off, perking up his head to listen to something.

Clint tried listening also, but he heard nothing. Even with his hearing aids, he couldn’t tell what Steve was listening to. “Apparently Steve’s actually part eagle. He’s part eagle, you’re part cat. Does that make me part hawk?”

“Sh, I hear it too,”Natasha chided. Clint closed his mouth and focused. Off in the distance, there was screaming. Then it would silence and more would start. It was like an undulating wave of screams. It wasn’t until he heard the crashing closer to them that they all realized what was about to strike.

“Tsunami!”Steve screamed. Instantly, everyone around him started running to find higher ground away from the coast. Natasha and Clint stood completely and utterly still, listening as the ominous wave grew closer and closer. Sound was all they had, as there was no light to give them a clue as to just how fast the water was moving towards them. “We’ve got maybe ten seconds. We need to get high, and fast,”he ordered. People had already started rushing back into the hotel, and the stairways were bogged down. There was no going back that way.

Clint nodded, but Natasha was staring down the street in front of them. “Too late,”she whispered, pointing at the street. Dark, angry water had started to fill it up and was pouring towards them.

Clint looked around frantically for a staircase, a building to scale, anything. Eventually he opted for: “run!”He tugged Natasha with him and they broke into a sprint in the other direction with Steve behind them. When that street ended, Clint banked left and kept running. All the while, he pushed past things in streets and alleys and tried to outrun the wave.

But they could only keep that speed up for so long. Eventually his legs began to burn and water started to pool around his feet. Still they kept running, zigzagging around obstacles. One soggy boot in front of the other. When he tripped over a railing, Steve hauled him back up.

That was when the rest of the wave hit. It forced past their legs and carried them up off the ground. He lost his grip on Natasha as she screamed. Natasha never screamed. The very sound brought terror washing over him.

Their hands were wrenched from each other as she went in one direction and he went in another. Everything went silent as he was tugged under the water and fought to come up for air. He didn’t know what happened to Steve. When he did get up again, sputtering and coughing, he tried calling out for them. His voice was met with a chorus of yells and churning water. Clint’s body was pulled back under and after a few seconds, was met with the side of a building.

Pain immediately exploded across his chest as he felt the ribs crack under the weight of his body and the water. He ignored his body’s instinct to gasp, as he was still underwater. He pushed against the ground with his feet and shot up, head breaking through the surface. Clint gulped down a few lungfuls of air and let loose a string of curses before the water got him. It tossed him down the streets like a rag doll. This far into the city, the water was filled with all sorts of debris. His legs became a mess of tissue after colliding with panes from a broken glass window and his once fractured ribs became broken ribs after another collision with what used to be a car.

There was no way to see anything in the dark water. He knew when the street changed direction because the water threw him even deeper down so no part of his body was touching the air. He fumbled around inside of it blindly, praying for some break in the thrashing. After being under the water for nearly a minute, what little he had been trying to make out got darker as he lost consciousness.

* * *

Steve had heard Clint calling his name, but his lungs had filled up with water and he had been unable to answer. He was once again drowning in cold, dark water. But this wasn’t like when the Valkyrie had crashed; this was remorseless and violent. It ripped him apart and smashed him to pieces with pieces of wood, metal, and whatever else the wave had picked up on its way inland. His back connected with multiple pieces of debris, but thankfully the shield protected it from the brunt of the injuries. He tumbled and spun and rolled through the water, not even conscious enough to try and dodge some of the debris he could see sticking out.

Almost five minutes after the wave had hit and he had been carried who knew how far with how many injuries, he managed to get his hands around a ladder that descended from one of the buildings. Steve tried to calm his burning lungs, taking in air as fast as he could. He held onto the slick, metal ladder with all of his strength, praying that soon the onslaught of water would come to an end.

With only his torso out of the water, his legs became subject to whatever mutilation the debris in the water decided to offer. What felt like a large plank of wood or metal smashed against the back of his knee, sending spots into his vision. His entire limb was encased in fire from the inside out, making Steve grit his teeth to avoid crying out more.

And still he held on.

* * *

Natasha had never liked the water. It was always an implement of torture for her. While in small, innocent amounts it kept her alive, in many other senses it had almost ended her too many times to count. This time was no exception. She had lost consciousness after being underwater and was surprised to find herself awake again. Between the darkness of the water and the darkness of the world around her, she had assumed that the darkness of death would soon join them.

But that was not the case. Instead she woke up, coughing and sputtering on instinct to get water out of her lungs. She later found out that it was an awful idea. Natasha was laying on her side, with her back facing a building and her front facing the street. The coughing sent spikes of pain not only through her chest, but down to her stomach as well. When she risked a glance down, she could see a large chunk of pipe sticking out from her abdomen. Based on the way her back was screaming too, she had to guess that it had her fully impaled through the back as well.

That was as far as her self triage went, as that knowledge alone had her slipping back unconscious.


	2. Helpless

_“_ _Eight o_ _’_ _clock on the dot, and don_ _’_ _t you dare be late._ _”_

_“_ _I had a date_ _…”_

With that, light began flooding his vision. It wasn’t the light of warmth and security and whatever lay next. It wasn’t the light that he had felt too many times in his life after too many close calls. No, this was the light bringing him back to the cold, harsh, hurtful reality. The one that at the moment, he felt inclined to leave behind.

But Steve Rogers was a fighter. So against the pain, against the brightness of the world, he opened his eyes. And immediately wished that he had kept them closed.

It was apparent by the pain in his side that he had ended up on a pile of rubble. The stone fragments dug into his skin, threatening to draw blood. Steve lay absolutely still. The last thing he remembered was hanging onto the ladder with all his strength. He didn’t see it directly above him, so he had likely been knocked out, let go, and then carried an unknown distance.

As he slowly looked around to try and get his bearings, he found that the scene in front of him was enough to paralyze. He had a clear view down a street, or, what used to be a street. The once empty space between the buildings was littered with debris of all kinds. Household items, tarps, scraps of metal, building pieces, all of them covered the street. Dirty brown water sat in pools and trickled down the broken roadway. It looked like a scene from a disaster movie, except this time Steve was right in the middle of it.

Steve spotted a hand poking out from the rubble ten or so feet from him and immediately looked away. He didn’t want to think about all of the people buried under the rubble; the ones that were less fortunate than him. Instead, he looked to the sky. The sun was low, which meant that he had probably been out a good ten hours or so and it was now early morning. He doubted that he had been out an entire day; emergency responders would have gotten to him by then and started cleaning up the mess. That, or the serum should have healed him enough to have roused him within a day. Steve sighed a little, glad that he hadn’t been unconscious too long. He could feel the cold, hard metal pressing against his back and smiled slightly in relief.

By some remarkable miracle, his shield was still stuck to his back. He couldn’t even imagine trying to find it in this chaos. He fumbled around in his jeans pocket for the issued phone that he had been given for the mission. Steve sighed in defeat as he pulled it out. It wasn’t really a surprise to find the front completely cracked and shattered, but it was still a disappointment. He pressed every button on it just in case and nothing happened. So instead, Steve turned his attention away from everything in front of him and focused simply on sitting up.

He gingerly turned his body so that he was laying on his back instead of his side. The pain from the rubble lessened as he moved. Slowly, he arched his back up until he was half into a sitting position. Steve took a few deep breaths, beyond grateful that his lungs seemed to be intact. The shield had spared his back and ribs from the most damage. Holding himself out of the water partially had helped also, although it was obvious that he eventually succumbed to unconsciousness from the water.

While his shield and holding onto the ladder had helped his upper body, his legs, on the other hand, were a completely different story. Steve’s pants were ripped completely to shreds. They were a mix of dark blue fabric and an even darker crimson. The fabric itself was sticky with water and half dried blood. He peeled back one of the fabric shreds and hissed in pain. It was as if his entire first layer of skin had been ripped off and imbedded with metal. Shards of metal and rubble were stuck into the marred skin. And that was only his right leg.

Steve’s left one was even worse. His knee was swollen and a strange shade of purple beneath the blood. He gingerly touched a hand to his head to try and calm the dizziness that had arisen. He was happy to find that his face was still in one piece, aside from a jagged line on his left cheek.

One by one, he went through each of his body parts. Steve started at the bottom and worked his way up. The thick boots had kept his feet relatively decent, although the boots themselves were trashed. His legs and thighs looked like they had been through a grinder. He preferred to not look at them. Torso and chest seemed okay, at least from what he could tell without looking. Hands, decent. His one index finger had been dislocated. With a grunt of pain, he repositioned it. His arms had been mildly protected by the jacket that Natasha had thrown him before they had left.

_Natasha._ Steve instantly became more alert, as if he could do anything to find her. From his little pile of rubble in the middle of what looked to be a war zone, he was utterly helpless. He hadn’t seen her since the wave had hit. He had heard her scream, and that was it. Then there was Clint calling out to him…

Both of his teammates were missing. In the middle of an unfamiliar city, in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Steve grunted in pain as he sat up further, trying to get a better look around. He was still in pain and horrifically even with the serum, and couldn’t imagine what Clint and Nat were going through. If they weren’t already gone…-

Steve shook the thought from his head. They were master assassins in good physical shape and had probably endured worse. Natasha would definitely chastise him for doubting her abilities to survive this. Clint would make jokes about Steve being a worried old man.

But looking around at the destruction and the current predicament he found himself in, worry wormed its way through his head. He was their friend, and the leader on this mission. It was his job to protect them and he had failed.

_“_ _It_ _’_ _s not your fault, Steve,_ _”_ he could hear Natasha say. Still, Steve felt like he had to do something. He had to look for them. But first, he had to stand up. He tested out bending his right leg and knew that if he pushed himself to the limit, he would be able to stand on it. He tried to move into a different position, but pain flared in his left knee from even the slightest movement.

He had to get up. Steve grit his teeth and tried bending his knees to bring his legs in closer. Almost immediately, his body rebelled and his legs went slack. Steve’s vision swam as he tried to get his ragged breathing under control. If it wasn’t clear before, it was clear now. He wasn’t going anywhere at the moment. He was no good to Natasha and Clint if he was dead from pushing himself too hard too fast.

So instead, he blinked away the black spots in his vision. He lay back gingerly against the rubble. In a few hours, hopefully the serum would help and he would be able to fasten some sort of splint and hobble down the city streets.

But he couldn’t do anything at the moment. It burned in his soul to be so weak and unable to do anything. So Steve closed his eyes, forced away the feeling of helplessness, and tried to not focus on the sound of sirens in the distance.


	3. Breathless

Clint knew from experience that when he woke up coughing blood, it wasn’t a good sign. The tickle in his throat had led to him waking up, which led to coughing, which led to an immense pain in his chest, which led to blood coming out his mouth. All of these eventually led to him passing out.

When he came to again, Clint made a strong reminder to not cough. Or breathe at all, for that matter. _“_ _Don_ _’_ _t breathe and you suffocate, dumbass,_ _”_ he could practically hear Natasha nagging him. He nodded, as if in response to the words that she had not said. Clint cracked his eyes open and groaned. Blood spilled out of his mouth and down his chin in the process.

From what he could make out, he was up against a wall. Said wall was part of a building. He was sitting half up, slouched to the side against it. Clint braced his hands underneath him and lifted up so that he was sitting straight up. That one simple motion made his head spin and stomach lurch.

He took a glance down at his legs, which were definitely worse for wear. Long story short, they looked like they had been attacked by a knife-wielding ninja. Blood had soaked through the fabric of his pants from multiple gashes on his limbs. Luckily, they were just gashes. From what he could make out, there were no metal pieces stuck in his leg and there were no chunks of flesh missing. Gashes he could manage with. It would be a pain in the ass, but he could manage. Sure, they stung and slid and pricked and ached all over, but he had been through worse.

Clint pressed a boot heel to the ground, applying a small amount of pressure on each foot. He then rotated each ankle in a slow circle. Nothing seemed to be broken, which was a major relief. He went to sigh and immediately stopped himself.

Legs, arms, hands, face, all could be fixed and tolerated. Internally, however, was where the problems lie. Mentally cursing, Clint tried taking a few breaths to see how much air he could get. The largest without coughing was about half of a normal breath. Press play on more internal cursing.

Once before, he had been on a mission, got caught on the side of a building with enemies closing in, and had no more grappling arrows in his quiver. Rather than be slowly tortured, he jumped off of the two story roof. However, Clint had misjudged his landing and nicked a windowsill, which sent him spinning and tumbling to the ground. On his chest. He ended up breaking four ribs and couldn’t take a full breath for months. He always made sure to have four grappling arrows just in case after that.

His lungs and chest felt like they had been before. Broken and mangled and simply painful. It felt as if pieces of shattered bone were picking their way through his lungs, like tens of tiny knives inside his body. Clint was sure that if he listened hard enough, he would be able to hear the bone shift when he breathed. He stopped thinking for a second and cocked his head, realizing something.

Clint could faintly hear rubble falling to his left side, but realized that he couldn’t hear anything on his right. He brought a shaky hand up and tapped the hearing aid in his right ear. No response. He pulled it out and looked at it. While it looked decent enough, it had probably gotten too waterlogged. How the left one had managed to work was beyond him, but he was grateful for it.

He stuck the aid back in his ear, praying that it would dry out and start working again. Until then, he was mostly deaf in one ear. What else was wrong?

The pain in his lungs was intense and sharp every time he stole a breath in and forced one out. It felt as if someone were slowly turning a knife inside of his chest, forcing it deeper and deeper each time. The metallic taste in his mouth and blood dripping from his chin didn’t help the situation.

Instead of focusing on the injuries that he couldn’t fix, he stuck a hand into his pocket, searching for his phone. But of course it wasn’t there. All three of them had been together, with one burner phone each for contact. Clint didn’t have his phone. Chances were that both Steve and Natasha’s would be lost or waterlogged also. So all three of them were lost in a post tsunami landscape, probably half dead, with no way to contact each other.

However, he did feel the bulge of his gun against his back. Clint had secured it before leaving, and was now glad that he had. What he would do with a gun, he had no idea. Maybe is another tsunami rose up, he could shoot it.

If his ribs didn’t cut into each other with blinding pain, Clint would’ve laughed at the situation. But he couldn’t laugh. So instead, he leaned his head against the wall. There were sirens some blocks down, but he couldn’t see anything beyond the building and street he was facing. Nothing but torn up houses and debris. Wonderful.

Where the hell were Steve and Natasha? They had all been right together, and then the wave had struck. Depending on where they were carried, they could be miles away. Hell, they could literally be anywhere. And he didn’t even want to start imagining what shape they were in. If they were in any position like him, it wouldn’t be good. He was currently half deaf, had mutilated legs, was suffering from dizziness caused by blood loss and shock, and had severely messed up lungs.

“Great, just great,” Clint whispered sarcastically. It turned out that talking had about the same effect as coughing, and soon Clint found himself back in blackness.


	4. Motionless

Natasha’s vision swam and turned as her eyes groggily opened. Harsh sunlight flooded her vision. There were voices above her, talking in low and quiet tones. Someone was lightly poking her shoulder. “Go away, Clint,”she mumbled, only half conscious. Natasha couldn’t focus on the figure in front of her, which was definitely a cause for worry.

“Miss, I’m sorry, but you need medical attention. We have to move you,”the voice replied.

Her eyes opened more and found an aid worker standing in front of her. He had kind, worried eyes and looked like he had been working too hard. The white and red band on his arm was splashed with blood, as was his uniform. Natasha lay still for a few moments before remembering the tsunami, half drowning, and then finding out there was a pipe through her.

“We have you hooked up to an IV, but you’ve lost a lot of blood and need surgery. We need to get you to a hospital,”the man said. Natasha’s vision shifted to where another man was standing with a stretcher.

All around her there were workers and helpers. There was screaming and crying and destruction. The ground beneath her was wet and soggy. Natasha nodded her head slightly and the man lay the stretcher down next to her.

“Okay, we’re going to pick you up and move you on three,”the first man said. They counted to three and lifted Natasha up and onto the stretcher. Her body really didn’t appreciate the sudden movement, as a spike of pain went through her entire body, making her gasp for air. She curled in on herself, trying to be mindful of the bar in her stomach. Amid her moving, she could feel more blood seeping out of the wound between the bandages. It felt as if her life was slowly going out with it.

Natasha knew that she was probably injured elsewhere as well. The wave had tossed her and she had hit some pretty nasty pieces of debris. She cast a quick look at the rest of her body, trying to avoid the image of the bar poking through her stomach. Everything looked to be alright. A few gashes and bruises.

Her eyes focused on her right ankle next. Although she was half conscious, she knew that her ankle shouldn’t be pointing limply straight to the right. Pole through her stomach and broken right ankle, she noted.

“It’s alright, miss. We’ll have you at the hospital in ten minutes,”the second man assured as they picked up the stretcher and began walking through the destruction. The process was slow as they picked their way through chunks of concrete and forgotten pieces of society.

“If only we could get cars through here. We’d be able to get to so many more,”the first muttered quietly.

The stretcher bounced slightly as the men hurriedly walked through the broken buildings and past the overturned cars. Everywhere, people were receiving medical aid or being picked up like her. Other people…Clint and Steve.

Natasha’s heart rate skyrocketed as she began to panic. “Wait, wait, wait, my friends are still back there,”she rasped weakly.

“Were they with you when the wave hit?”

Natasha nodded. “We got separated. But they’ll need help too. I have to go find them.”

“We can’t allow you to do that. Chances are they’ve already been spotted and are receiving attention. Let’s get you help first, and then we can check hospital manifests for them.”The hospitals would be overflowing with patients, and not enough supplies for them all. Too many people, too much paranoia, too much destruction. Natasha knew that there was a good chance that she would never see them again.

She could not live in a world without knowing where they were and what had happened to them. They could be buried under rubble, helping other people, dying, getting medical attention, checking the hospitals for her. The list of where they could be went on and on.

The stretcher continued moving forward as Natasha craned her head to look back at the city. Steve and Clint were out there somewhere, probably hurt, and she was leaving them. She should be out there looking for them, trying to help. It was what they would do for her. Hell, Steve was probably half dead, but up on his feet looking for her and Clint. Without someone to tell him to take it easy, Steve could push himself too far looking for Clint. Natasha wasn’t there to remind him to take care of himself as well.

She stole a glance at the rebar in her torso and fought against the sick feeling in her stomach. She was already dizzy and the motion of the stretcher really wasn’t helping. Couple that with blood loss and the overall trauma, and it all became too much.

“Can you tell us your name?”one of the men asked.

Natasha blinked her eyes half-heartedly, trying to stay awake. She tried to form words, but she couldn’t get her lips to move. She began to go limp in the stretcher as she noticed the men picking up the pace. The world darkened a shade, even against the bright mid-morning sun.

Her eyes focused on the stretcher beneath her, where a pool of blood from her wound had formed. It was so red against the white of the medical instrument. The entirety of her torso burned and stung as if she had been shot. Not to mention that it was terribly hard to not move.

But she was a fighter, and she knew it. Natasha grabbed onto whatever sense of life she had left and clutched it, determined to never let it go. She wasn’t ready to leave. But it seemed like her body had other ideas.

Her heartbeat rang in her ears, and it was much too slow. It was as if the organ itself was limping and she was falling behind. Everything was fuzzy and shiny and painless. It was a sense that both calmed and terrified her to the core.

“We’re losing her, we need to go faster!”The two men picked up the pace a little, but it was hard to do while carrying a dying woman on a stretcher through a disaster zone. Rubble slipped and moved beneath their feet.

“I’m trying!”one responded. “Hang in there a few more minutes and we’ll get you help.”

Natasha half nodded, not really hearing their words. A few minutes was too much to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we've got some background on where the three Avengers are at. Now it's just a matter of hopefully getting them together ;) If anyone is enjoying, feel free to drop a line!


	5. On and On

When Steve woke up again, the sun was directly overhead. His skin burned and looked pink, even to his blurry vision. Even with the serum, he’d have a nasty sunburn. He sat up slowly, glad to find that the dizziness had subsided some. His head felt more centered, and he had an objective in mind. The first step towards reaching that objective was making a splint.

Steve took a few minutes to get his bearings again before sitting up a little. While his legs looked slightly better, they still leaked blood and were incredibly painful. His knee was still purple. Steve grimaced in pain as he moved his right leg, and barely avoided blacking out when he shifted his left. He looked around for any materials to use and his gaze landed on a few split pieces of wood off to his right. He reached over slowly, willing his hand to stop shaking, and picked up the two pieces.

He set down the wood next to his legs and took a minute to catch his breath. One full minute, then he reached to his left and picked up what looked to be a blanket. Or used to be a blanket. Steve ripped it down the middle so that it was in two strips. He then positioned the two wood pieces on either side of his left knee.

Lining up the wood, he straightened his knee and gingerly lifted up his leg so that he could slide the two towel strips underneath it. Steve then wrapped the pieces around his leg and the wood and tied it as tight as he could. He tried flexing his knee, sighing in relief when it didn’t bend. While the splint wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world, all he needed for it to do was hold up.

Steve pushed back the dizziness in his head and reached for a long pole, which had probably at one point been used to hold a market stand up. With the pole in his hand, he looked down at both of his legs. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but the situation wasn’t good. He would get nothing done by staying put. It was either stay in pain, hoping for rescue, or get up and search.

He bent his right leg, held his breath, and pushed up on it, half surprised when it held his weight. Steve got his right leg under him and stuck his left one out straight. The pole went to his right hand to balance everything out. Steve took a few slow steps, trying to calm his heaving breaths, and descended from his rubble pile. His wheezing breaths were interrupted by groans of pain.

Every single motion burned and sent waves of dizziness coursing through him. But Steve still kept moving. One foot, pole, straight leg, repeat. On and on until he turned a street corner and continued.

* * *

Everything hurt. Absolutely every single fiber of Clint’s being ached and screamed in agony. He was pretty sure that even his hair follicles were in pain at that point. He lazily opened his eyes and caught half a breath of air. The sun was directly overhead, and he was grateful to still be in the shade of one of the buildings. The blood on and around his mouth had dried, and cracked when he yawned.

His lungs still had flames in them, but at least the pain in his limbs had subsided some. Clint knew that eventually he would have to get up and find help. Or help would find him. He prayed for the second one, because at the moment, breathing while stationary was incredibly difficult. Breathing while moving would not end up well.

Muscles in his back were cramping and tight from him being so stock still and afraid to move. One by one, he tried relaxing his muscles. Every muscle burned for a second, then seemed to melt into a puddle until he had sunk back against the wall. With a grunt of pain, Clint grabbed the gun from his belt and lied it on the rubble next to him.

Now he could properly lean back. While it was still uncomfortable, it was better than walking and suffocating. The urge to get up and look for Steve and Natasha was in the forefront of his mind. He had to find them and help them. Other people even, buried underneath the rubble. They needed help too.

Clint’s head swam as he envisioned all of the people that needed help. Thousands upon thousands flooding the hospitals, more buried in the destruction, and more watching horrified on their TV screens at home. Was Fury watching? Had he sent someone to find them? Or had he left them to their own devices once again? It would probably be the safer option, to not draw more attention to the fact that three Avengers were injured and stranded in a foreign country.

He once again cursed himself for his overactive mind and current predicament. Just as he had done hours before, Clint found him staring at the opposite building waiting for something, anything, to happen.

But Clint absolutely hated staring and doing nothing and boredom in general. By his right hand there were plenty of small pieces of concrete. On the other side of the street there was a metal can. Clint smirked, picking up one of the pieces and gently throwing it towards the can. It landed a foot or so too short. Even though the motion hurt, so did everything else. He could stand a few shards of pain if it eased his bored mind. He picked up another piece and threw it.

Over and over and over. The sound of the concrete pieces hitting the ground, and sometimes the can, echoed in the silence.

* * *

Steve eventually fell into an uncomfortable rhythm. Foot, pole, step, on and on and on. Walking over and around debris proved to be tedious and incredibly painful. However, the desire to find Clint, Natasha, and anyone else that may still be alive surpassed the pain. He kept his eyes peeled for any sort of movement. So far, there had been none.

Alive people, that was. There were plenty of people that hadn’t been as lucky as Steve. Mangled bodies half buried in debris littered the streets. Steve soon learned to train his eyes on the ground in front of him and only look up when needed. He simply wished that he could do something. Help someone, find someone alive, do anything but walk alone through the streets covered with death.

He was an Avenger and a soldier. Both of those jobs involved helping and saving people. Looking around made him realize that he had failed his job. He knew that Natasha would tell him to stop beating himself up, but a guilty feeling still rose in his chest.

Emergency vehicles and personnel hadn’t gotten to his section yet. It was uncomfortably quiet. Besides the sound of falling rubble and distant sirens a few miles off, it was silent. He hauled his body over a large beam and turned down another street, closer to where he heard the sirens. But the silence was still overwhelming.

Foot, pole, repeat. It was like a mantra he repeated in his head, a tempo that he set and followed. Push past the pain, focus on the objective, do like he had always done. Steve kept pushing forward.

Eventually one street ended and he was faced with a simple decision; left or right. Steve stood still for a minute, catching his breath. He looked down, happy to see than none of his wounds had reopened. He then cast his gaze down each street, which seemed to mirror each other in their destruction, chaos, and loss of life. Steve shook his head and made his way down the street to his right.

The street that he had chosen turned out to be a long one. It was littered with cars and large pieces of debris, almost making him want to turn back and head the other direction. But Steve kept going. Past the buildings and the people and everything else. Past the pain and the defeat and the helplessness.

That was until he heard it. A small ‘plink’. Steve stopped and listened. It repeated once every ten seconds or so. Sometimes the sound was more earthy, and other times it sounded metallic. The uniformity of the sound caused Steve’s heart rate to go up. Maybe it was pieces of falling rubble, or it was someone calling for help. Either way, Steve was curious.

He limped forward a little bit quicker, happy when the sound seemed to get louder as he moved.

* * *

Clint had been throwing concrete stones for half an hour, smiling each time one hit a can. It kept him busy and awake. Off to his left side, however, something crunched. It was like unsure footsteps coming his way. A somewhat limping, dragging sound that got closer with each passing second. But with only half his hearing, Clint couldn’t exactly tell what it was. He immediately stopped throwing and cautiously picked up the gun at his side. It could be a survivor, or an animal, or something else, but Clint figured that it was better to be safe than sorry. He took a shallow breath and leveled the gun to where it would hit right behind an overturned blue car. Clint cocked the hammer back and waited, not moving a muscle.


	6. Hear Me

Just as Steve was nearing the sound, it stopped abruptly. He crept forward, which was hard to do with an injured leg, and stopped behind a rusted blue car in the middle of the street. Right when he was prepared to take a step forwards, he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked back. Steve stood absolutely still, not knowing who was on the other side of the truck, and what condition they were in.

“I’m here to help,”Steve rasped out, hating how weak and thin his voice sounded. “Please put the gun down.”

In an instant, he heard the gun being slammed on the ground, as if for emphasis, and breathed a sigh of relief. The person on the other side of the car seemed to be trying to say something, but Steve couldn’t make out the quiet words.

“I’m walking around the car now,”Steve announced, as to not frighten the person further. He cautiously stepped around the car and the concrete blocks and was met with a sight that he hoped and prayed he would never see again.

Clint was sitting up against the wall, fairly covered in blood, and breathing shallowly. His head lolled to the side as he stared up at Steve. But through it all, he was smiling. There was blood on his teeth and his face, but he still smirked at Steve. It was a gesture filled with gratefulness, pain, and even a small glimmer of hope. Because someone had found him. _Steve_ had found him.

“Jesus Christ, Clint,”Steve whispered, casting his own worried smile. There they were, two half dead Avengers, grinning because in the midst of all of the chaos, they had found each other.

Upon further inspection, it became increasingly clear to Steve that Clint was in bad shape. Steve himself wasn’t doing too well, wavering between unconsciousness and the real world, but at least he had the serum on his side. Clint was a fairly normal guy.

“Why didn’t you say anything when I walked up? I heard a gun and thought I was about to get my head blown off,”Steve said, giving Clint a small smile before coming to stand closer to him.

Clint looked up at Steve lazily. He pointed with his index finger towards his chest and then made a squeezing motion with his hand. Steve noticed how shallowly Clint was breathing. While there was minimal blood on the outside, his rib cage and lungs must have been injured when the wave hit. That was probably why he wasn’t walking around or talking for that matter.

“Bang up your chest pretty good?”he asked, to which Clint nodded slowly. “Scale of one to ten, how bad is it?”

Clint thought for a few seconds, and gradually took a few deep breaths, before coughing slightly and grimacing. When he held up seven fingers, Steve knew that it was partially a lie but didn’t call him on it. Like him, Clint was one to hide his pain and make things seem better than they were. “Seen Nat?”Steve asked next. Clint shook his head sadly in response.

He looked Steve up and down, gritting his teeth when he saw Steve’s legs. He pointed to them and gazed back up at Steve waiting for an answer.

“I’m fine, Clint,”Steve brushed off in typical fashion. Clint tilted his head and looked annoyed at Steve. “Some gashes and a messed up knee. No broken bones. I’ll be fine.”Clint seemed more accepting of Steve’s second answer, but still shook his head and smirked. He knew how much Steve was downsizing his injuries, but made no further gestures about them.

Clint then held his right arm up at a perpendicular angle. After a few seconds of him waving his arm around, Steve realized that he was gesturing about the shield. “Oh, that,”Steve muttered. He tapped his back, where the metal shield rang underneath his jacket. Clint cocked his head to listen before sighing in relief.

Steve stopped asking questions for a few minutes and took the time to sit down. He bent his right leg and kept his left straight in front of him. While it burned and caused multiple wounds to reopen, he was soon sitting up against the building next to Clint. Along with the pain caused by his injuries, hunger also gnawed at his stomach. It had been over a day since he had last eaten, and his increased metabolism didn’t help.

“We need to get moving. Find some food or water or people or help,”Steve said quietly.

Clint held up four fingers and smiled.

“Or all four,”Steve smirked. He cocked his head to listen to the sound of sirens. “Medical can’t be more than a mile out. Would you be up for it in a few hours?”

Clint took a few more breaths, rolled his shoulders and ankles, and nodded a little. It wasn’t like he had too much of a choice. He needed water and food as well. And medical attention, lots of it.

“This is so strange,”Steve whispered. “You’re always the one talking and cracking jokes. I’m not used to it being the other way around.”Clint cocked his head more towards Steve before nodding and smiling. “You don’t have a concussion, do you? You keep cocking your head.”

Clint shook it back and forth and gave what appeared to be a sigh. He stared at the concrete for a few seconds, as if running decisions though his head before moving. In a slow motion, he reached a hand up to his right ear and pulled out what appeared to be a hearing aid. He tapped it a few times and shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re deaf?”Steve asked, trying to keep the exclamation to a minimum. Clint nodded and held up eight fingers before forming a ‘0’with one hand. “Eighty percent deaf. That’s much better. So you can’t hear out of your right ear?”He shook his head. “Were you going to tell us?”Another tentative head shake.

Steve sighed with a small smile. “You and your pride and spy secrets. Any other ailments I need to know about? Cancer? A prosthetic limb? Do you happen to have a glass eye?”Clint’s chest shook a little with suppressed laughter as he shook his head again.

“If you think of anything else before we start moving, please let me know. And just because you can’t talk doesn’t mean that we won’t talk about this later,”Steve reminded.

Clint placed a hand to his head and made a mock salute before leaning back against the wall.

* * *

The next time Natasha awoke, it was because she was being moved. Her eyes cracked open to reveal a small hospital room and five or so people in scrubs around her. Various metal instruments clattered around and the head doctor shouted out what they needed. An oxygen mask was placed over Natasha’s face, which she turned her head against. She had always hated the masks. They made her feel silent and powerless. The oxygen was too cold against her skin, sending chills down her arms.

“Miss, you need to hold still,”one of the nurses said quietly. Natasha lolled her head back and forth a few more times before complying. She was laid out on her side on one of the tables. The left side of her body was facing towards the ceiling so that the doctors could better see and hopefully remove the rebar.

“This was all we have left,”a nurse said breathlessly, opening the door to the room. She had a single blood transfusion bag in her hand and set it down on the table. Through the doors that slowly closed, Natasha could hear all other kinds of commotion. Screaming, shouting, crying, it all echoed down the tile halls.

“Crap,”Natasha heard the doctor mutter as he took a closer look at her wound. “We’re administering some sedatives and pain blocking drugs into your IV while we try to remove the bar.”

Natasha vaguely noticed a nurse filling up a syringe and sticking it into her IV line.

“If all goes well, we’ll have you out of surgery and in a bed within four hours.”

She shook her head again, strongly objecting to the idea of being put under. She didn’t want to be completely powerless in this situation. Even in her current, half conscious state, she felt more comfortable simply because she knew what was going on. She could half see the doctors milling around. She could vaguely hear the sounds of the hospital outside.

The sounds and the sights and the smells helped her to feel grounded. Natasha absolutely hated the feeling of floating on and on through the darkness, with no control of knowledge of what was happening.

But it became fairly obvious that she didn’t have a choice. Gradually the pain began to ebb away. It looked like someone was pulling a black curtain across her vision.

What if one of these people knew who she was? What if they made a mistake? What if they took advantage of her current state to get rid of the Black Widow? She would have absolutely no say in the matter.

Natasha shook her head a few more time, listening to the oxygen mask as it clattered. When she was finally pulled back under the waves of unconsciousness, her mind was filled with doubt and fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the missing members are finally back together! Taking a break next chapter to see what the rest of the team has been up to while all this had been going down.


	7. Help

Bruce had never been a huge TV fan. Sure, if the team was having a movie night he would join in. He would show Steve movies or stay up late with Tony watching the _Star Wars_ marathon. A few shows here or there, but never for longer than an hour. Bruce was always tinkering or finding some way to better the world.

That was why the first red flag Tony noticed when he walked back into the Tower that day was Bruce sitting on the edge of the stool, hunched over and staring at the screen. Thor held a similar position, but on the couch.

“Tsunami?”Tony asked from the kitchen. JARVIS had told him about the natural disaster during his business meeting. While he had been taken aback by the incident, there was nothing he could do when surrounded by a bunch of guys in suits that couldn’t care less. He finished the meeting as quickly as he could, with JARVIS providing small bits of information should anything new arise. Two hours later, he was at the Tower.

“You really should come see this,”Bruce said quietly, not moving from his place on the footstool. Tony grabbed a few crackers and made his way over. Once he set his eyes on the disaster in front of him, however, all thoughts of eating left him.

“Jesus,”he whispered, sitting on the couch as Thor made room. The footage showed a giant wave completely engulfing the city. People and debris were all mixed in with the water. It plowed through absolutely everything in its path. Whole buildings were swallowed up by the angry water and simply vanished. Cars were swept along with it before being crunched and disappearing.

Thor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We have had disasters before on Asgard. But none this costly.”

“JARVIS, what’s the casualty count?”Tony asked quietly.

JARVIS replied in just under four seconds with, “estimates are ninety-eight thousand and climbing.”

“We’ve got to fly out there or do something. Hospitals will be overrun. They need supplies and assistance,”Bruce whispered, watching as the footage changed from the tsunami to the news anchors talking about the occurrence.

“I agree with Doctor Banner,”Thor chimed in. “It is our duty to protect and help.”

Tony found himself nodding in agreement. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, seeing a text from Fury.

_[Angry Eye Patch] 8:37 Emergency meeting. Briefing level in 15. Bring Banner and Thor._

“Guys, we gotta go. Fury needs us,”Tony spoke up, finally getting Bruce to turn away from the TV. Both he and Thor nodded. In a few minutes, they filed out the door.

“What do you mean, they’re there?”Tony exclaimed angrily. “When were you going to tell us?”

Fury sighed and placed his hand on the desk. “It didn’t concern you. Rogers, Romanoff, and Barton were perfectly capable of handling the mission, and even got it done a day early. You had meetings, Banner was working on new tech, and Thor simply wasn’t needed. It was an easy, stealthy in and out,”Fury replied. “I had no idea this was coming. I just got word of the tsunami myself. I never would have sent them had I known.”

“And where are they? Do you have contact with them?”Bruce asked, pacing the floor of the briefing room.

“None. Satellites are too far out. They were each given a phone, but in the disaster they were probably broken.”

“We must get to them. They, along with thousands more, need our help,”Thor inputted.

Fury sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Believe me, the first thing that I want to do is send you after them…”

“Here comes the but,”Tony muttered.

“-but it could also endanger them.”

Tony scoffed at Fury. “How the hell is saving them endangering them? They need our help, Nick. We can’t sit by and do nothing.”

“You have to think about this from all angles, Stark! No one outside of this room knows that half of the Avengers were on a mission there.”

“Who cares? They. Need. Help,”Tony shot back.

Bruce put a hand on Tony’s shoulder and shook his head. “I see where Fury’s going with this. If our enemies find out that half of the team is there, possibly injured or dead, they’d go looking. Chances are that Steve, Nat, and Clint are in no place to put up a fight. They’d be easy targets, especially if the enemy knew what to look for,”he sighed. “Or they’d stage an assault while half the team is down for the count.”

“It would not be wise to alert enemies to their presence. It could only harm them further,”Thor replied quietly. “The three of us could not hold off a full blown attack by ourselves.”

“Then we go in stealthily. No flashy Quinjets or red capes or giant green monsters.”

“And what about you, Tony? Iron Man won’t draw attention?”Fury replied, rising from his seat.

“Gloves and boots then, not the full suit. But we need to be there to help. Take supplies even.”Tony was caught off guard by Bruce slowly shaking his head.

“If we’re going to do anything, we at least need to wait a few hours, see how bad it gets,”he said quietly.

Tony shook his head and scowled. “We should already be out there helping.”He paused for a second. “If the roles were switched, you all know that Steve would already have taken a Quinjet, with Nat and Clint on board to go help.”

“Against my orders, he would have,”Fury chimed in.

“That’s not the point! If it were us stuck out there, dead or alive, they would come to help us. We need to go out there.”

“Stark, I said no. Wait a few hours and we’ll see.”

Tony stood up and ran his hands angrily though his hair. This wasn’t right, and he knew it. He opened the door to the briefing room and said, “they may not have a few hours. Ever think of that?”before walking out.

His footsteps echoed throughout the metal interior of the hallway and were soon joined by another pair. Bruce caught up with him down the hall. “Where are you going?”he asked, trying to keep up with Tony’s determined pace.

Tony sighed and shook his head. “Tell Thor, get in gear if you want.”

“Fury said-“

“I don’t give a damn what Fury said! They need help! Either you come with me, or you wait for Fury to give the go ahead when it’s too late. But I’m pulling a page out of the book that Steve and I wrote together and am disobeying direct orders to help my teammates.”

“You need to think about this from both sides, Tony,”Bruce tried.

“There’s no time!”Tony half yelled. “They are most definitely injured. Steve’s probably far from okay, even with the serum. I don’t want to think about how bad Natasha and Clint could be. Hell, they could be dead already! Or in a hospital. What happens if a doctor recognizes them, huh?”

“They save their lives?”

Tony shrugged. “Hopefully. What if they run out of supplies? What if the doctors hate the Avengers and decide ‘whoops, the scissors slipped and now the Black Widow is bleeding out and will be dead in a few seconds’? There’s any number of things that can be going wrong as we sit here and gab about it. They need our help, Bruce.”

Bruce put his head down and sighed. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Nope!”Tony yelled, picking up his pace down the hall towards the elevator. “Go grab Point Break. I’ll grab some medical supplies, you get foodstuffs. Wheels up in twenty. Don’t tell Fury.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've mobilized the rest of the team, now let's go save some people! Thanks for reading ;)


	8. Scissors

Clint figured he had to have dozed off at some point, because he opened his eyes when he felt a light tapping sensation on his shoulder. Light poured in and he blinked against it, eliciting a groan which rattled his broken ribs.

“We need to get moving,”Steve said quietly. It was almost apologetic. He knew that Clint shouldn’t be moving, but there wasn’t any other choice. The sirens he could hear even with his messed up aid were still too far away to be of any immediate help, which they needed.

“You should know better than to wake up an old man from his nap,”Clint muttered out. Or at least that’s what he intended to. What ended up coming out was a garbled mix of half speech, half coughing. Clint placed his head back against the wall, trying to calm his shaking lungs.

“No talking for you then, old man.”Clint managed a half smile. Steve got the gist of it.

He cast his eyes over Steve’s form. His knee was slightly less purple, but he still winced whenever it moved. Steve’s eyes appeared to be a little unfocused as well and he blinked them often, as if trying to stay awake. Clint glared at Steve like a dad chastising their child. He could tell that Steve knew exactly what he meant.

In usual captain fashion, he brushed it off. “Had to keep watch. I’ll get some sleep once we get help.”He turned his head to the side to avoid another one of Clint’s glares. “Okay, up and at em.”Steve muttered mostly to himself. He braced his leg against the ground and inched his way up the wall, whispering a few half curses as he did so.

Eventually, he stood up, but his face was red and beads of sweat formed on it. Clint had seen Steve in a number of bad situations. He was used to Steve looking tired, bloodied, and brushing off injuries. What he wasn't used to was the look of helpless detachment that he saw in Steve’s eyes. It was as if the whole world was resting solely on his shoulders. Clint hated it.

Steve reached down to pick up Clint’s gun, securing it in the waistband of his own jeans. He then placed a hand within Clint’s reach. “You can do this,”he said, trying to be encouraging. Doubt still seeped into his voice. Steve had never been a good liar.

Clint tried anyways. Because Steve was standing, with everything he’d been through, and Clint owed him at least that. So he grabbed Steve’s hand and hauled himself up, holding his breath and nearly pulling Steve down as he did.

Immediately his ribs began to crack and grind, sending pain flares all throughout his body. Every single muscle seemed to spasm from being released of their cramped state. It quite literally felt as if someone had reached inside his chest, gotten ahold of his ribs and lungs and started crushing them together. Clint braced a hand against the wall, doubling over. A cough rose in his chest, to which he held his breath against. After a few seconds, it died down and he got in half a wheezing breath.

Steve gave him time to collect himself and get things under control before he asked, “Ready to go?”The redness in his face had dissipated into a tone of ashy white.

Clint took a few more moments before leaning away from the wall. He shuffled his feet a few times and walked a few steps. While his heart hammered in his chest, sending blood throughout his broken body, it was bearable. Uncomfortable, horrific, excruciatingly painful, yes. But if Steve could do it, so could he.

“There we go.”Clint heard Steve a few paces behind him and turned around. The captain smiled as much as he could, pleased by Clint’s meager achievement.

“No marathons anytime soon. Nat would actually kill you,”he mentioned, catching up to Clint. “Need any help?”

Clint shook his head immediately, knowing that leaning on Steve wouldn’t help his situation any. And Steve didn’t need any more weight to carry as it was.

“Okay,”Steve shrugged. “Just let me know if you’re about to pass out or anything and we’ll take a breather.”He cocked his head up to the sky, listening to the sirens. “They can’t be more than a half mile out.”

Clint tried listening as well, but with only less than half his hearing and blood now seemingly rushing in his ears, he went by what Steve said. Side by side, they began the slow trek down to the street to what they hoped—prayed would be help.

* * *

Tony sat in the pilot’s chair of the Quinjet, doing systems checks and putting in the routes. “How long until liftoff, J?”Tony asked, clapping his hands together.

“Approximately three minutes,”came JARVIS’reply. Tony nodded and exited the seat, walking outside and down the ramp to pick up a few more boxes. He had loaded up the Quinjet with medical supplies, food, and other necessities that could be distributed while they looked for their comrades.

“Found the big guy,”Bruce announced, walking into the hangar with Thor in tow.

“Aren’t you the big guy?”Tony asked with a slight smirk. Bruce tilted his head in annoyance before giving Tony a small smile. “Glad to see no red cape, by the way. Normal looks good on you,”he pointed to Thor, who was dressed in casual civilian clothes like Tony and Bruce.

“Ah, yes. I figured that I would leave Mjolnir on board the jet as to not draw unwanted attention. I can retrieve it if needed,”Thor replied, spinning the hammer in his hand.

“Okay. Changes of clothes for Cap, Red, and Legolas. Supplies, food, medical, yadayadayada,”Tony muttered, making a mental list in his head. “All here, ready to go.”

They all walked on board and sat down inside the jet once the ramp had closed. “Fury’s gonna be pissed,”Bruce said quietly.

“He’s always pissed!”Tony called back from the cockpit. It was so weird for him to be sitting up there; Clint was their normal pilot. With JARVIS, however, it was nothing that Tony couldn’t handle. “Start her up, J.”

The engine hummed to lift and gradually the Quinjet made its way forward. The doors at the end of the ramp opened, giving way to a blue sky.

“If anyone asks why we’re there, it’s just to help. The Avengers are known for helping people, so no one will be the wiser. Still, don’t make a scene,”Tony said as they neared the end of the ramp. He pushed the thrusters forward and the jet shot outwards.

“Incoming transmission from Director Fury,”JARVIS announced.

“Stark! What in the hell are you doing? Turn that jet around!”came Fury’s angry voice over the loudspeaker.

“Sorry, you’re breaking up there,”Tony replied nonchalantly. “We’ll see you back home, Nick.”Before Fury could respond, Tony shut off the communications and sighed.

“Travel time is about eight to ten hours, depending on weather. Who’s ready for a trip to the Philippines?”he asked to the back of the jet.

“I just wish it were under different circumstances,”Thor muttered.

Tony shrugged his shoulders and finished punching in the location information. “Yeah, me too buddy, me too. Let’s bring our guys home.”

* * *

The downside of being in a second-rate hospital in the aftermath of a tsunami: the anesthetic. There was far too little of it and what the doctors did have was a lower concentration. Being trained as an assassin for so long, Natasha had built up a slight wall against some drugs.

All of these factors led down to one outcome: Natasha could hear everything. Every so often, there would be pricks of pain, but she wasn’t able to wince or move. She was trapped inside of her own body, completely and utterly helpless.

The good news was that she half came to after the pipe had already been removed. She listened to the garbled voices of doctors and nurses trying frantically to save her life. The skin on her abdomen pricked, a sensation that she knew to be stitches.

_“_ _Another scar to add to the list_ ,”she mentally grumbled to herself.

A loud popping sound shook Natasha away from her thoughts, immediately sending a wave of nausea through her.

“Immobilize it, we don’t have the casting materials available here,”the head doctor said. It took Natasha a minute or so to make out what they had said, since she seemed to be hearing under a few layers of water. She could hear something shifting below her and being unrolled. Most likely it was a wrap for her ankle. Hopefully when she woke up it would be pointing the correct way.

“How are those stitches coming?”

“Not too well,”one of the assistants muttered.

_“_ _Crap,_ _”_ was the only thing going through Natasha’s mind.

“The bar didn’t pierce anything vital, but the holes on both sides large. It doesn’t want to stay together. I’ll keep trying, but she’s gonna have a hell of a time walking for a little while.”

“You do that,”the doctor replied. Natasha heard their heavy footsteps over by her head. By the way the doctor sounded, she could make out that it was a he, and based on how he moved, he wasn’t a small guy. “How’s the head looking?”

“She’s going to have a nasty concussion when she wakes up,”another nurse chimed in.

_“_ _Hole through my stomach, busted ankle, and a concussion, what else is wrong?_ _”_ Worry began worming its way through Natasha. She could hear the heart monitor steadily increasing.

“Other lacerations have been sealed,”a nurse from down by her foot announced.

“Good. I can take it from here. Go see if anyone else needs help and if we have other transfusion bags,”the doctor ordered.

“But sir, she’s still critical-“

“Go. Surgery’s almost done, we need the room open. We don’t need three nurses and a doctor for this right now. I can finish the stitches.”

The nurses didn’t need much more convincing as all three of them rushed out of the room. The feeling of worry grew and grew inside of her. The doctor moved around to her back, where the pinch of stitches started going again. Natasha had begun to relax in the slightest when the doctor started talking.

“I’m actually surprised that you’re not completely awake yet,”he said.

If Natasha had been awake, she would have cocked her head in confusion. How the hell did the doctor know that she could hear him? She tried moving her limbs, but was still completely immobile.

“Heart monitors never lie.”The doctor snipped scissors, cutting off the rest of the string. Something in his voice screamed for Natasha to run. She was completely and utterly helpless. What he said next chilled Natasha to her very core.

“Now, Ms. Romanoff, let’s help you feel better.”The scissors opened and closed again and Natasha put all of her will into screaming. No sound, or movement came out. The sound of scissors flooded her ears until it was all she could hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for a cliffhanger, dun dun dun ;)


	9. Unsteady

It became more apparent with each limping step that Steve had hit his head rather hard. The street and destruction around him seemed to blur together. Everything was too bright or too loud or too detailed. The dizziness hit him about twenty minutes after they started walking and refused to let up. Not being able to see straight and a broken knee did not work well together.

The way his heart would not stop racing meant that he was still suffering from some sort of blood loss and most likely a minor state of shock. Everywhere he looked was destruction, unlike anything he had seen before. It was different than explosions and ash and rubble. This was…brokenness. Everything had been swirled together and compacted in the world’s largest blender, then laid back out on what used to be the streets. It was already hard for him to get a few hours of sleep each night. With what he was seeing, Steve wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again.

Steve managed to keep pushing for another fifteen minutes, but eventually had to stop and lean against one of the buildings for support. His ears rung as if someone had hit a bell inside his head. Steve closed his eyes forcefully and opened them a few times, trying to regain his composure and focus. A few seconds later, he heard Clint nearing him but kept his head down.

Clint placed a gentle hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve raised his right hand and waved Clint off. “‘m fine,”he muttered. “Just a little dizzy is all.”And hungry and tired and exhausted and in excruciating pain. But Clint didn’t need to know that. He was just as bad at hiding his actual state as Clint was.

The archer was focused on Steve’s lips as they formed words. With his decreased hearing, Steve figured that Clint understood most of what he was saying by reading lips. One more impressive thing about Clint Barton.

The next thing he knew, Clint was lifting Steve’s head up gently. He looked Steve in the eyes and shook his head. He then made a fist and imitated it hitting his own skull.

“I’ve had a concussion plenty of times to know what this is,”Steve replied with a pained smirk. The thing was that he had never had one so bad before. And with the serum especially, they usually went away in under a day or so. Steve felt around his head, and sure enough there was a large bump at the base of its right side. “Another injury to add to the list,”he muttered and dropped his head again.

Steve took a few deep breaths, which seemed to ease the pain in his head slightly. His heart stopped pumping so painfully and he began to feel somewhat more centered. After a minute, he dropped his hand from the wall and stood up straighter. In his mind, he attempted to stand up straight and walk forward. What ended up happening was his feet got tangled together and Clint was forced to catch him before he fell face first to the ground.

He stood up again, determined to not let a head injury get the better of him. The sirens were only a few blocks away and they both needed medical attention. Clint’s hand on his chest stopped him from going any further.

Clint looked to him with concern in his eyes. It was so different than the snarky light that he almost always held. Clint’s gaze was hard and concerned, which worried Steve to his very core. Any time that Clint looked concerned, it was definitely bad.

“Need rest,”Clint wheezed out, pointing to Steve.

“No. We need medical and water, which is only a few blocks away,”Steve countered, shaking his head in the direction that they were headed. “Then we can rest.”

“Steve.”The desperation in Clint’s cracking voice was what got to Steve the most. It was more like a plea than an order. A plea for Steve to not push himself any further, out of fear that things would only get worse. If Steve got worse, Clint wouldn’t be able to help. He couldn’t exactly run towards help, and there were no supplies for either of them. Clint could barely speak, which he shouldn’t have been doing, much less yell out for help.

“We’re right there, Clint. Just a few more blocks,”Steve replied. While staying and resting for some time did sound appealing, they didn’t have time. He tried taking a few steps, but everything in his vision kept moving and undulating beneath him. The ringing was back, as was his horrendously pounding headache.

His knees began turning to jelly and before he knew it, he had slumped back against the wall. Steve’s head lolled back and forth as he tried to keep conscious.

He somehow registered Clint kneeling on the ground in front of him and pressing his fingers to Steve’s neck to check his pulse. “Maybe a short break is good,”Steve slurred out as the blackness encroached on his vision.

“Steve,”Clint said forcefully, tapping him on the cheek several times in a futile attempt to keep him conscious.

The final straw was when Steve lost his balance against the wall. He slipped to the left and fell over into a heap on the destroyed pavement. Clint was helpless to stop him as his head connected with the ground, effectively taking the light from the world.

* * *

There was a slight prick of pain on her back as the doctor affixed a bandage to the other side of her wound. Terror pumped through Natasha’s veins. If she were awake and could see, there was no way that this guy was getting out alive. But she was completely immobile, feeling as if she were just a spectator about to watch her own death take place.

“I’m not going to lie, I am a bit surprised that our paths crossed,”the doctor continued, opening up a packet of instruments.

_“_ _Here we go, typical villain monologue. Oh how I wish I could shut him up,_ _”_ Natasha thought, her fists itching to connect with his face. But she still couldn’t move.

“You are a hard woman to track, Miss Romanoff, and even harder once you went off the grid. How surprising it is that an innocent job let us come together.”He wrapped a strip of bandages around her leg, not stopping his speech. “I suppose however, that this is better. You are here, but not entirely. I, however, am completely here with everything I need at my disposal.”

Some metal clanked together in the tin next to Natasha’s face as the doctor made his way over to her front side. She could tell that he had picked something up, but without her freaking vision, she couldn’t tell what.

“You have been a wonderful patient thus far,”he purred quietly, sending chills down Natasha’s spine. “I know that you are awake, but not present, Miss Romanoff. We will have to wait until later for that.”He pulled up a chair from the side of the room and sat down in it, still facing her.

“For your sake, I do hope that you become conscious soon. I have some questions to ask you, Natalia. SHIELD, or what is not left of it, does not send you on missions alone, and I would like to know where the rest of your team is. I suppose I could always implement some measures to wake you up,”he flicked the side of the instrument in his hand, which was definitely metal. “But what fun would that be, Miss Romanova?”

The use of her entire Russian name made Natasha’s blood run cold. This was no normal doctor bent on revenge. He knew about SHIELD, and her real name. And he was stuck with her in a hospital room in a foreign country. Wonderful.

She could sense the doctor moving closer to her, no doubt about to use whatever instrument he had in his hand. Before he could, however, the doors flew open.

“Sorry, we need to use this room, a more critically wounded patient came in,”a nurse explained through heaving breaths.

“Absolutely fine, I was just finishing up,”the doctor replied calmly. He set down the instrument. “I’ll push her bed down to section C, there are still spaces there, right?”

The nurse flipped a few pages in some sort of a book. “Not many, but yes. The hospital is taking in three times as many patients as it is capable of holding. It’s not good,”she explained.

“Let’s get them out one at a time then,”he replied with a slight cheer to his voice. “I’ll meet you back here after I finish with her.”

“Sounds good, Doctor McCalbert.”

The wheels on Natasha’s gurney started moving as the doctor pushed her out of the room and down the halls. It was slow work, given how crowded everything was. Immediately Natasha wished to be back in that room again. Everything outside was so noisy. An endless amount of groaning, screaming, and crying bombarded her ears.

Natasha’s half-conscious brain tried to remember each of the turns they took, but she lost track after seven. Instead, she focused on the doctor’s name, if it even was his real one. She couldn’t place it anywhere, which was more unsettling.

After a few minutes, the gurney came to a stop. “Home sweet home, Miss Romanova,”Doctor McCalbert said, turning the wheels a little and placing the gurney. He leaned down closer to her ear so that she could hear over the noise. “Don’t get too comfortable.”With that, he stood up and walked off.

Natasha tried desperately to calm her racing heart. It was quieter where she was, probably because the doctor had placed her in the back corner of wherever she was being kept. Most likely so no one looking for her would find her. Natasha cursed in her mind, trying to think of some kind of an escape strategy. If she could get mobile, there was a chance that she could escape the hospital.

But what then? She wouldn’t be able to move much at all. She had no idea where Steve and Clint were, and there was most likely no rescue crew looking for her. Natasha realized with a sinking heart that she was all alone, stranded in section C of the hospital, with a revenge-bent doctor just waiting for his opportunity to strike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you missed Bruce, Tony, and Thor in this chapter, don't worry, they'll play a big part in the next one, which is definitely a doozy. Hoping you guys are still enjoying! :)


	10. Fourteen Minutes

“Jesus,” was the first word out of Bruce’s mouth as they flew over their destination. He, along with Tony and Thor, peered out the windows of the Quinjet to look at the mass destruction below. The TV stations and reporters didn’t do the scene justice. It looked as if entire towns had been picked up and dropped repeatedly. Flashing lights of emergency personnel could be seen among the wreckage, along with the brightly colored vests of aid workers.

“Faster we get down there the better,” Tony muttered. In another few minutes, the Quinjet was parked in a small safe house hangar a quarter mile or so from the main area of destruction. “Grab all of the supplies you can carry,” he ordered and picked up various boxes of medical equipment. Both Bruce and Thor followed suit, walking down the ramp of the jet.

“Remember Thor, no hammer,” Bruce piped up.

Thor nodded in response, remembering how the hammer would give them away even more. He doubted that he would have to use it, unless he had to fly, which was unlikely. He placed his hammer back in the jet and picked up four cases of equipment, letting the ramp close behind him.

It took them ten or so minutes to walk down to the main location where tents and medical areas were set up.

“Here with supplies!” Tony announced. Immediately five workers turned to him and rushed over.

“Where did you get all this stuff? Why are you here?” many of them asked. Most of the workers were too caught up in the supplies to notice who had delivered them. Those that did notice offered nods of appreciation and large smiles.

“Just looking to help out,” Bruce explained, distributing pain killers, needles, bandages, and various other necessities. They began handing stuff out and taking it wherever it was needed, trying to be of service. All the while they were praying for signs of their comrades.

Some small, white tents had been set up outside for people that had been recovered from the wreckage. Ones that were well enough were treated there, while more critically wounded ones were sent to the overcrowded hospital.

“How far inland have you gone?” Thor asked, looking at where the medical tents stopped.

“Only about a mile. We haven’t cleared anything past about a hundred yards from here, and we don’t have enough people to go looking any further. You’re welcome to take a peek if you want, see if there’s anyone out there,” one of the nurses brought up as she passed.

Tony elbowed Thor lightly in the ribs. “You go. Bruce and I can distribute stuff here. You’re super strong, right?”

Thor cocked his head in mock annoyance.

“Right, of course you are, you’re a freaking god,” Tony smirked. “You see anyone trapped, you get them out and bring them here.”

Thor nodded in response and stepped away from the medical tents. The debris, made up mainly of mud, broken glass, and shards of metal and wood, cracked under his heavy boots as he walked forward. Once he passed the hundred yard mark, the destruction became much worse.

He kept walking forward, turning onto the first street he came to, hoping that there was someone alive to find.

* * *

Clint watched in horror as Steve’s eyes closed upon him hitting the pavement. He scrambled forward, desperate to find a pulse on Steve’s neck. His bloodied fingers left stains where they touched, but he breathed a short, painful sigh of relief when he found a faint pulse.

He grimaced, sliding his legs out beneath him and joining Steve on the ground. Now that Steve was unconscious, Clint could let the pain worm its way onto his facial features. Ever since they had started walking, breathing had become much more difficult. The constant pain developed into throbbing, excruciating agony whenever he moved in the slightest. His lungs weren’t taking in the oxygen they needed, which was also causing him a great deal of dizziness.

He hadn’t wanted to let Steve know, the man was going through enough was it was without having to worry about Clint on the side.

Clint braced his hands against the ground, half smirking when his right hand connected with a pen. He brought it closer to his face, genuinely surprised that it hadn’t been broken when the wave had hit. Clint spun it around a little in his fingers, grateful for something to take his mind off of his current predicament.

That was when he remembered the slip of paper inside his jeans pocket. The small strip of paper that he had taken from their motel, in case he ever needed to write something down.

With a grunt of pain, Clint shifted himself so that he could get the paper out of his pocket. It was still damp and dirty, but it would have to do. Clint ran the pen along the edges of the paper, shaking it a few times before the ink was released.

Clint pursed his lips, realizing what he was doing. He had thought about doing it before, but had never actually done it. That was how helpless his current situation was. With tears in his eyes and blood from his hands on the paper, Clint began to scratch shaky letters onto the parchment in front of him.

When he had finished, he neatly folded the paper and grasped it in his hands before tossing the pen to the side.

Steve still hadn’t moved a muscle. His hair was dirty and bloodied and his face was a paler shade of grey than Clint had ever seen it. It was such a stark contrast to the red on his face and lips. His knee was a giant purple bulge, still better than it had been before, but the gash marks on his legs hadn’t healed much, even with the serum. Amid all of this, Clint knew that Steve could make it. With medical help, he’d be back on his feet in a few weeks maximum.

As Clint took another shaky half breath, he wasn’t so sure about himself. If he leaned back too far, he couldn’t breathe at all. He had to stay perfectly straight in order to get any air into his failing lungs. If the time came, he knew what he had to do.

That time came sooner than he thought. Crunching came his way and steadily got louder, as if someone were walking towards him. Clint quickly picked up pieces of rubble and began throwing them, making some sort of noise on the street.

The footsteps stopped for a moment, then picked up quickly in his direction. Clint kept throwing his small stones until the person turned a corner and was looking directly at him. Clint was positive that he was about to cry

Above him, in civilian clothes, looking utterly terrified, stood Thor.

He immediately crouched down next to Clint, his eyes filled with worry. If Clint could laugh, he could have. He would have yelled and screamed and cried and smiled all at the same time. What he ended up doing was breaking into a huge grin and leaning his head on Thor’s shoulder.

Thor’s arms immediately went around Clint’s body in a gentle hug before he disengaged and looked Clint over. “We were so worried,” he whispered. Clint nodded his head over to Steve and Thor’s face fell even more. “Is he still…” Thor ground out, swallowing thickly.

Clint nodded and made the gesture of something hitting him over the head.

“Why do you not speak?” Thor asked worriedly. Clint pointed to his chest and made a clawing motion, to which Thor nodded. “Any idea where Natasha is?” Clint shook his head sadly. “Alright, we need to get you out of here,” Thor started, standing up. “Are you alright to be moved?”

Clint shook his head a few times. He pointed to Steve instead. “You are here and awake now. I can come back for Steve in ten minutes. You need medical attention.”

Clint smirked at the thought. Hell, they both needed it. But the truth that Clint had finally gotten around to accepting was that Steve had a better chance of surviving than he did. _“Medical can’t help me now,”_ Clint thought, bouncing the thought around in his head until it settled.

With burning eyes, Clint pushed Thor gently so that he turned to face Steve. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked with a cracking voice. There was no way that Thor could carry both of his injured comrades at the same time.

Clint nodded again. He held his hand up to Thor, showing him the note. “Give to Natasha. She’ll know what to do,” he wheezed out, grimacing as his lungs tried to take in more oxygen. His shattered ribs ground and poked together.

With a shaking hand, Thor took the bloodied note and placed it carefully in his own pocket. “I will come back for you,” he promised. “Ten minutes and I will be here with help.” _Don’t die on me_. That was the addition to that sentence that Thor didn’t have to say in order for Clint to understand.

Thor didn’t have his hammer, meaning he couldn’t fly Steve to safety and then fly back. He would have to walk the entire way.

Clint blinked his eyes and reached up to grab Thor’s hanging hand. “Thank you,” he whispered. It may have been a trick of the light, or of his under oxygenated brain, but Clint thought he saw a tear slip out of Thor’s eye. As if he knew the truth as well.

“It is an honor fighting alongside you. We have many more fights to win,” Thor replied, grasping Clint’s hand so hard it almost hurt. This may have been the aftermath of a tsunami, but it was still a fight nonetheless.

Clint backed up as much as he could, chest heaving as Thor got his arms under Steve. He picked him up bridal style, making sure to not let Steve’s head loll backwards too far. Steve, while he stood a solid, muscly six feet tall, looked small and helpless in Thor’s arms. Thor checked for a pulse one more time before nodding.

“Not his fault,” Clint muttered, pointing to Steve as Thor stood up fully. “Make sure he knows that.” He knew that Steve would blame himself for what happened next. He would blame himself for not being conscious and forcing Clint to go first. Clint knew that Steve would have done the same thing for him in his position.

“I will, Clint,” the Asgardian said, nodding his head solemnly. “Ten minutes, I promise.” He stole another lingering glance at Clint, as if he were trying to memorize the way the archer looked before turning back down the way he had come. His steps were heavy and slow, given that he had to carefully navigate through rubble while also carrying an injured super-soldier.

It took two minutes for Thor to be out of sight. Clint relaxed back against the rubble just enough so that he could gasp in a few mouthfuls of air.

It took five minutes before his vision became spotty. Clint had always hated not being able to breathe. Asphyxiation and drowning were his two worst fears. He was now facing both of them.

It took seven minutes for him to start losing feeling in his body, but he still kept his eyes open. Maybe out of hope, maybe out of stubbornness. But with each shattering breath he took, more fluid filled in his lungs that he was powerless to stop.

It took nine minutes for the hope to start running out. Clint lazily counted each passing second on his fingers, forming the words with his lips.

It took ten minutes before his vision started going. Ten minutes before he started seeing the farm. He could feel the warm sun on his face and the grain in his hands. He could hear his children’s laughter all around him.

It took eleven minutes for Clint to finally close his eyes. The shattered, destroyed landscape in front of him disappeared from view. His children’s faces engulfed the blackness of his vision. With all his might, he prayed that his team and his family would be safe. His breaths were little more than gasps at that point, harshly moving in and out until the pain and the fluid became too much and they didn’t move anymore.

It took twelve minutes for Clint to slump back against the wall and utter a final sigh. There was a pained smirk stuck on his face.

It took thirteen minutes for Clint’s heart to stop sending blood to his drowning lungs.

It took fourteen minutes for Thor to return, only to realize that he had come back too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the feels! *passes out tissues as needed*. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them! The warnings for the story have also been updated.


	11. Gone

Tony held the bandage in place as Bruce carefully wrapped it around the injured woman’s arm. They were helping out in any way they could, which meant bandaging, handing out water and food, and simply offering support. “Release,”Bruce gently instructed.

Tony slid his fingers out of the bandage, allowing Bruce to tie it off. “All set. No sudden movements, keep it clean,”Bruce told the woman with a nod.

“Thank you,”she whispered, her voice filled with exhaustion and gratitude.

“Just trying to help,”Tony replied, cracking a small smile. The woman left, making room for a younger man with a nasty head gash.

“Why don’t we have you sit down?”Bruce asked calmly, pulling up a plastic chair for the man to sit in. “Tony, could you grab me some antiseptic and bandages?”

“Right away, boss,”was Tony’s reply. He was trying to keep things somewhat light, calling Bruce nicknames during tense moments. He returned a minute later, and handed Bruce the supplies, which he immediately began using to disinfect the man’s wound.

That was the moment, out of the corner of his eye, when Bruce spotted Thor appearing from the rubble. Bruce stood up, bringing a hand to his face in disbelief when he saw. Thor was lumbering forward, carrying Steve in his arms. Steve wasn’t moving.

“Shit,”Tony swore under his breath, his face turning a pale shade of white. The small smirk and any type of lightness that situation had held was sucked out.

“Doctor Banner!”Thor shouted. All heads turned to him, then immediately back to what they were doing.

“Jet, now,”Bruce shouted back as his hands began to shake.

“You get to Steve, I’ll finish with this guy and meet you there,”Tony replied quickly, and took the bandages from Bruce. “Go!”

Bruce nodded, standing up and jogging over to Thor. His face was pale and stony and his feet moved as quick as they could to reach the Quinjet. Bruce placed a light finger to Steve’s neck, almost collapsing when he found a weak pulse. He looked the captain over, swallowing thickly at Steve’s multiple wounds.

His legs were dripping crimson spots onto the ground from too many lacerations to count. His knee was purple and twisted the wrong way. He was also unconscious, which was not a good sign.

“Any idea why he’s out?”Bruce asked, trying to keep up with Thor’s pace.

“Clint made a gesture about something hitting him on the head-“Thor started, but Bruce cut him off.

“Wait, Clint was there? Where the hell is he?”

Thor began walking a bit quicker. “He made me take Steve first. Clint’s chest is badly damaged. I need to get back to him.”It didn’t escape Bruce’s notice how Thor’s face fell at the statement, but he kept moving.

They entered the safe house and opened the Quinjet. Thor gently set Steve down on the medical table before grabbing his hammer. “There’s no time to waste,”was his explanation before walking down the ramp, spinning it, and shooting off.

Bruce immediately got to work on Steve. He took off Steve’s jacket first and breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing the shield stuck to his back. He removed it quickly and set it on the side of the table. After a minute of rummaging through equipment, Bruce pulled out an IV bag, bandages, stitches, and whatever cleaning liquid he could find. He hooked up the IV bag first and got a drip going with some strong sedatives to hopefully help with the pain.

“You’re gonna be just fine, Steve,”he whispered as he cut off Steve’s pants at the thigh to get a better look at his wounds. Various pieces of metal, rubble, and debris were stuck in Steve’s legs.

He half smirked when he removed Steve’s splint. It meant that Steve had been alert enough to make a splint, so hopefully his concussion wasn’t too bad. Bruce poured antiseptic on the wounds first, then set about removing the debris. One by one, pieces clinked into the metal tray by his side. He was surprised that Steve was still alive, in all honesty. His blood loss would have killed other men two times over.

Stitching up his legs was the easiest portion out of it all. He was worried that he would run out of thread and ended up putting in so many stitches that he lost count before wrapping his wounds in bandages. Bruce quickly cleaned and stitched the gash on Steve’s cheek as well. He made a note of where he had been hit on the head before moving onto Steve’s knee.

About ten minutes had passed before Tony came running into the jet, breathless and pale. “Guy’s all squared away, what can I do here to help?”he asked, his eyes helplessly scanning over Steve.

“I’ve stitched everything I can. It’s his knee that’s the problem. Definitely some ACL damage, plenty of torn ligaments and such. It’s all sorts of messed up,”Bruce sighed, removing his gloves and pushing back his hair in frustration. “We need to get him back home, Tony, he needs surgery.”

“Done, we can be out as soon as needed,”Tony nodded, placing his hands on his hips. “What can we do?”

“Immobilize it, get him fluids, hope he pulls through,”Bruce replied quietly. “And his, uh, his head. If he’s still unconscious, it’s really not good. There could be brain damage, a whole mess of things I can’t see.”He ran a hand over his face, not wanting to think about what kinds of complications there could be.

“He’s Cap. He always pulls through.”Although the sentence was meant to be a statement, it ended up coming out more like a prayer. “Any news on Clint or Nat? And where’s Thor?”

Bruce dropped his head and pursed his lips. “Getting Clint,”he replied slowly, raising his gaze only to look at Tony.

A look of utter defeat and exhaustion settled in Tony’s eyes. Through it all, came a flash of fear. A flash of absolute terror. “And is he…?”he started.

Bruce half shrugged, grabbing a bandage wrap. He gently set Steve’s knee and wrapped it up as best he could. The soldier was completely silent throughout the entire thing. “It doesn’t sound good,”Bruce admitted quietly. He tied off the wrap and stood next to the table, bracing his hands against it.

Steve was so unnervingly still. His chest rose and fell slightly, but there was no movement behind his pale eyelids. “Hand me a water bottle,”Bruce said, his voice cracking. Tony walked to the front of the jet, retrieved a bottle, and handed it to Bruce, who took it with a nod of appreciation.

He doused a towel with the liquid and began wiping some of the blood off Steve’s face and arms. If this were any other situation, Bruce knew that Tony probably would’ve been making jokes about Steve being a half mummy instead of a capscicle. But the inventor was silent, his gaze flitting over his wounded friend.

They remained in silence for a few minutes more, before the sound of crunching boot steps had them turning their heads to look outside. Thor stood at the base of the ramp, hammer hanging from the crook in his elbow. In his arms was Clint.

Clint looked like a pale, lifeless rag doll. His body was small in Thor’s arms, his right arm hung out and draped towards the ground. His chest wasn’t moving.

Thor looked up to his comrades, silent tears in his eyes, and made his way up the ramp to the jet. His gaze was as hard and unmoving as Clint. He set the archer down on the other medical table inside the jet and stepped back, still staring at Clint.

“Come on, we have to help him. Bandages and water and…”Tony started, walking up to Clint, not wanting to register that it was too late.

“Tony, we can’t-“Bruce choked out.

Tony shook his head, bunching a towel between his shaking hands. “No, come on we can do something. He can’t be gone. We can resuscitate him.”

Bruce shook his head. “We can’t bring him back, Tony.”

“Why the hell not? Fury came back. Rogers should’ve died a million times by now. I came back, you came back, hell Thor nearly died and came back. Natasha I don’t even want to count,”he argued, not bothering to wipe away the tears on his face. “So why the hell can’t Clint? Why doesn’t he get another shot? We all did.”

Thor walked up behind Tony and placed an unsteady hand on his shoulder. “He was already gone when I got there. I wasn’t fast enough,”he admitted.

“No, Thor, you did everything you could,”Bruce assured quietly.

“I should have taken him first. I shouldn’t have listened. I could have-“Thor cut himself off, bowing his head.

“Not your fault. He probably knew that Steve had a better chance, which was why he told you to take him first. You saved Steve, which is what he wanted,”the doctor replied. The words were for himself as much as they were for Thor and Tony.

Clint lay pale and broken on the table, a line of dried blood dripping from his mouth. His eyes were closed and his lips were turned up slightly in a small smirk.

“He told me to tell Steve it wasn’t his fault,”Thor whispered. “I refuse to lose two friends in one day,”he added, looking at Steve and shaking his head. He cast another glance to Clint, wiped away the tears on his cheeks, and walked down the ramp of the jet.

Bruce and Tony sat in silence for a few moments. “Nothing?”Tony whispered.

“Tony, if there were something I could be doing, I would,”Bruce replied, his tone more bitter than he would have liked. “Judging by the blood and the look of things, his ribs are crushed. No way to revive him. He’s—he’s been gone too long anyways,”he sighed, defeated.

It was one thing to not be able to help someone. It was a complete other to see your friend laying, dead in front of you, and not being able to try and bring them back. Bruce wasn’t able to save Clint, even when Clint had saved him so many times over.

“What do we do? When Steve wakes up, I mean,”Tony asked quietly, looking over at Steve, who was still unconscious.

Bruce pulled a blanket out of one of the compartments on the jet and gently placed it over Clint. “I don’t know.”He looked up at Tony, seeing utter hopelessness in his eyes that he knew must have been mirrored in his own.“I don’t know, Tony.”

Tony hung his head and nodded. Everything about him, from the way he hunched forward, to the red in his eyes, to the shaking of his hands, screamed defeat. It screamed giving up. That was until he raised his head, wiped his tears, and put down the towel he had been squeezing. He took a few steps towards the ramp of the Quinjet.

“Where are you going?”Bruce asked in a cracking voice.

“To find Nat. She’s out there. And I’m not losing anyone else,”he replied, not turning to look at Bruce. “Stay here, watch over Steve. I’ll come over comms if I find anything.”

With that, he marched down the ramp and stepped out onto the rubble. “Bring her back, Tony,”Bruce whispered. He sat down in a chair next to Steve and put his head in his hands. He refused to look at the lumpy sheet on the other side of the jet. He refused to believe that Clint was actually gone.

When tears began dripping onto his jeans, he wondered if he would ever be able to accept it.

* * *

The first thing Natasha registered when she came to again was the noise. The screaming, crying, and paranoia had all increased drastically. What she wouldn’t give for some earplugs. She could shift around an inch or so on her itchy cot and hissed in pain when she did so.

Then she paused. She had just moved and made a sound. The next thing Natasha focused on was getting her eyes open. Little by little, light began to pour in, and before long she was half looking at a white wall.

She was still in the corner of the hospital and was staring at the back wall. Her body was on its side, curled up slightly.

Natasha moved her fingers next, uncurling them one at a time and shaking out her arms. This was just another reminder of why she loathed being unconscious. She knew better than to try and move her midsection or her foot, so she craned her head and looked around.

The hospital was crammed full of people, all in various states of consciousness and liveliness. There were no doors around her other than the one that led into the large room, and the only windows were near the top of the wall, too far for her to reach. The only way out of the hospital was to go back the way she came.

Natasha let out a small sigh, struggling to accept the fact that in her current condition, she wouldn’t be able to make it anywhere. With a busted ankle and a hole in her stomach, she could maybe make it out of the large room without collapsing. And there was still the doctor that was out to get her. How she would escape him, she had no idea.

“Morning, Miss Romanova,”a cold voice said.

_“_ _Speak of the devil,_ _”_ Natasha thought, opening her eyes a little more to look at the man. He had short black hair, brown eyes, and a scar on his left cheekbone. While he wasn’t a large man, he had a sturdy build at just under six feet tall.

“Wonderful to see you’re still with us,”Doctor McCalbert said, a smirk curling onto his features. He “checked”the IV line headed into her arm, making Natasha tense up in apprehension. “I’m going to ask you a few questions,”he started, checking over her various other wounds, making it look like he was just a simple doctor doing his job.

Natasha resisted the urge to give a breathy laugh, realizing how much it would hurt. She settled on staring at the man, setting him on fire with her eyes.

“Here’s how it will work. One blink for yes, two for no. Fairly simple. It will be like a game of twenty questions.”Natasha rolled her eyes at his comment. He wasn’t getting anything from her. Sure, he knew her name and her job, but he didn’t know how much pain she could handle. “And I advise you, answer honestly.”

The doctor moved around to her foot, where he could see her in full view, but she couldn’t see what he was doing.

“Were you alone on your mission?”he asked, casting his gaze towards Natasha’s features. She instead stared straight ahead, not blinking. McCalbert seemed to smirk at her defiance and gently twisted her ankle to the side.

Flares of pain shot up through her leg, making Natasha’s breath hitch in her throat, but she kept her eyes focused on the wall in front of her.

“Was Captain Rogers with you?”Again, no movement on her part. He twisted her foot again, slightly harder, making her purse her lips in pain to avoid groaning with what little voice she had.

“Were you successful?” _“_ _Of course I was,_ _”_ was her internal response. It was met with another twist and a sigh of exasperation.

McCalbert moved so he was right in front of her face. “I don’t appreciate you playing games, Natalia. You will answer my questions.”

“The hell I will,”Natasha spat back, wishing her words didn’t come out so dry and hoarse. The doctor seemed to like her display of annoyed strength and clapped his hands together.

“Wonderful, now let’s start again. Where-“

Before he could get another word out, screaming echoed down the noisy halls. It wasn’t ordinary screaming, though. It was a singular name, called out in desperation and hope. It reached the far back of the hospital, drowning out all of the other sounds.

“NATALIE!”was being screamed at the top of a man’s lungs, near the front of the hospital.

“What the hell?”the doctor muttered, going up to investigate. He left Natasha alone in her cot, wincing slightly because of the pain, but laughing nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of angst in this chapter, but it's not all bad, we've got almost a happy cliffhanger for once ;) thanks for reading!


	12. Don't Let Go

Tony walked out of the Quinjet, running a hand along his face as he did so to get rid of the tears. His breath came out in shaky gasps as he struggled to hold it together. Clint, his friend and comrade and companion and fighting buddy, was dead. His body was covered by a sheet, sitting in the Quinjet mere feet away from him. He was dead and Tony was powerless to do anything.

He let that thought worm its way through his brain. Tony gave himself one minute to try and accept that fact. He took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and let it out. He had an objective. Natasha and Steve and Bruce and Thor were counting on him. Clint probably was too.

Once he found Natasha and got both her and Steve the help they needed, then he could crumble to pieces and let the grief roll over him just like the tsunami had this country. When he found Nat, and he prayed it would be alive, he would get her and Steve out. They would survive and get better, and then Tony could deal with losing his friend. This mission took priority.

He walked over to one of the aid workers at the small medical area, not caring how disheveled he looked. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”he asked, hoping that someone had found Natasha and taken her there. He would check there first, then the other aid tents. If that failed, he would dig through the rubble himself until she was found.

“Two miles down that way,”the young woman replied, pointing down a street to Tony’s left.

“Thanks,”he said with a nod of gratitude, and took off in that direction.

He walked as quickly as he could, avoiding the rubble and debris. Tony stuck to the side of the carved-out road, allowing the occasional bike and aid workers with stretchers to barrel through. Even with his goal in mind and walking as fast as he could, it still took Tony about twenty minutes to reach the hospital.

When he got there, he simply stood outside, running a hand through his hair. How the hell was he ever going to find Natasha?

The hospital was literally overflowing with patients. They were set up on the patios, in the grass, in the parking lot, even spilling out onto the street. There were simply so many people, and not enough supplies, doctors, or nurses to go around. Tony walked closer, scanning the faces of everyone he passed, hoping to see Natasha helping people, or sitting up somewhere visible. He had no such luck.

He didn’t find her at all outside, and eventually was forced to go inside. All at once, the smell and the noise and the tension in the air hit him. There was a small walkway between cots for people to step through. Nurses and doctors frantically passed by him, looking tired and half dead on their feet. There was no front desk for him to check with, and he doubted that most people currently receiving treatment were on record for actually being there.

Tony looked around frantically, worried that he had missed Natasha somehow. He scanned hundreds of faces per minute, but none of them were the red haired woman. Looking past everything, he could see multiple doors that went back hundreds of feet, where more people were located. There was no way that he could search everything.

He cleared the first room and moved on to the second. “Natalie?”he called, quietly at first. His voice soon rose to a shout to be heard over the multitude of screaming and crying. Tony figured that using her codename was better, since she would respond to it but it was still somewhat secretive. It would also let her know that it was him. “Natalie!”he called again. Several people turned their heads to look at him, then went back to whatever they were doing. Tony pursed his lips in worry, breathing out a sigh of annoyance. Where was she?

Eventually the screaming and crying and noise all became too much for his already shattered morale. No red-haired woman wearing the face of his friend appeared from among the thousands of wounded people surrounding him. “NATALIE!”he screamed. Everyone around him went absolutely silent for a few seconds before the noise started again.

Tony listened closely, hopefully for some pained call of his own name, but nothing happened. His voice had probably reached through the entire hospital, so if she were there, she would’ve heard. He went back to checking everyone before someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,”the man said as Tony turned around to look at him. “You’re looking for someone?”

“Yeah, sorry about the disturbance. Looking for a friend,”Tony replied, nodding and scratching the back of his head. The man was in a doctor’s uniform. He looked tired like all the rest, making his brown eyes and scar on his cheek stand out even more.

“Do you have a name or description?”the doctor asked, cocking his head.

“Her name’s Natalie. Bright red hair, kind of small. You can’t miss her,”was his reply, not going too in depth.

Something shifted in the doctor’s eyes. Recognition and a tinge or worry seemed to cross them before he shook his head.“I don’t remember seeing anyone like that. Our manifests are so chaotic, she won’t be in there.”

“You absolutely positive?”Tony asked, peering around the doctor’s shoulders to where he had come from; another room full of people.

“I’m quite positive. There’s an aid station about half a mile down, you may want to check there,”the doctor replied. There was something in his tone that Tony didn’t trust, but he couldn’t place what.

Tony shook his head. “I can keep looking here, then head down there, thank you,”he said, trying to push past the doctor. However, the man put up a hand to stop him.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you in there. More critically wounded patients are there, and we need all the space available. I just came from that wing, and I can assure you, no red haired women are there,”he nodded.

Tony looked over the man before nodding slightly. “Thanks for your help,”he replied and took a few steps back.

“Of course. I’m sorry about your friend,”the doctor mentioned. He cast another glance at Tony before walking back into the large wing.

Tony scrunched up his face in annoyance, staying where he was. Something wasn’t right about the doctor. Instead of leaving, he did what he did best; disobey orders, and continued looking.

* * *

Natasha heard McCalbert’s footsteps leave the wing of the hospital, signaling her chance for escape. The tone and use of her fake name was a dead giveaway that Tony was in the hospital, looking for her. She just needed to find him before McCalbert got back. She took a few deep breaths to psych herself up. She first gently removed the IV from her arm, letting the tube swing back and forth as it dangled above the floor.

She held her breath as she sat up, ignoring the dark spots in her vision. Her stomach and lungs instantly hated the action and her head swam with dizziness. Natasha cursed herself, remembering her concussion. She had to make it to the front of the wing and out, with a hole in her stomach, a broken ankle, and a concussion.

Natasha took another breath and forced herself up off the cot, using the wall for support as she held her injured foot off the ground. She pressed up against the wall and hopped forward on one foot, gritting her teeth as she moved away from her cot.

After ten steps, she felt her wound reopen and knew that it was only a matter of time before she either fell unconscious or the doctor came back. The feeling of fiery pins and needles spread out from her abdomen, making it hard to breathe. People in their own cots watched her move closer to the front of the wing, eventually reaching the front wall.

Natasha stepped into the corner and moved quickly along the wall, stopping before she got to the doors to catch her breath. Her ankle was screaming in agony and her vision spun, but she knew that if she didn’t get to Tony, there was a high chance she never would.

McCalbert stepped through the doors, obviously in a hurry, making Natasha’s blood run cold. She stood absolutely still, waiting for him to turn to the side and notice her, or see her cot empty from afar. However, by some miracle, he did neither. He simply proceeded down the row of cots, obviously headed for hers, at the back of the room.

Once she would be out of his sight, Natasha slipped through the doors and into the next wing. It was more of the same thing, except with less critically wounded patients. Her blurry gaze frantically searched for Tony, who could have been anywhere in the hospital, or outside of it.

With no wall to put her weight against and no crutches, Natasha hobbled forward using the heel of her broken foot. Two more minutes passed before blood started soaking through the bandages on her abdomen. Her shirt had been cut off at her stomach to make room for the bandages, which covered the majority of her torso. She had made it nearly all the way to the front of the second wing as her levels of hope began to fall.

Natasha moved around another cot just in time to see an uninjured man spin around, looking like he was lost. For the first time in days, Natasha broke into a smile. “Anthony!”she called, hoping that he would be able to hear her. She hobbled closer, wishing that she could run, and called his name again.

The second he lay eyes on her and his face broke out into recognition, Natasha nearly collapsed to the ground out of sheer relief.

* * *

Tony was overwhelmed by the amount of people surrounding him. The grief and worry and noise all made his head spin. That was until he heard his name being shouted over everything. He immediately perked up, searching for the source of the sound. His eyes eventually fell to a woman standing in the middle of the room, looking at him with tears in her eyes.

“Natasha,”he whispered, half in disbelief. Tony didn’t see the blooded bandages on her torso, or her hurt ankle, or the paleness of her face. He only saw his friend standing before him, alive. He half ran over to her, stopping a foot or so away to avoid bumping into her completely. “Natasha?”Tony breathed.

She simply smirked up to him. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” she asked, her voice dry and cracked. Before anything else happened, she had her arms wrapped around him in a light hug. He was so taken aback by the gesture that was just so _un-Natasha_ that he didn’t reciprocate until a few seconds later.

“It’s good to see you, Nat,” he whispered, pulling away. A wave of uneasiness came crashing down around him as he finally realized just how pale her face was. He noticed the blood on her torso and the bandages on her ankle. He knew that it wasn’t good.

“You too,”Natasha replied, nodding. “But we need to leave. The doctor, with the scar on his cheek, he knows who I am and what I do. It’s not good.”

“I knew I was worried about something,” Tony muttered, looking around for the doctor.

“He’ll notice I’m gone and come looking. We need to go, now.” Even in her current state, Natasha didn’t bother with formalities. Questions and answers could wait until later.

“You’re not supposed to be moving,”came another voice directed at Natasha. The sentence could have meant any number of things, and Tony could tell that if Natasha weren’t already so pale, she definitely would have turned a shade lighter. The doctor came up behind Natasha and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, as if they were old friends. “Let’s get you back to your cot.”

“Not a chance in hell,”Natasha bit back, shifting despite her wounds to get the doctor’s hand off of her. People in their own cots were watching the scene unfold, but Tony simply didn’t care.

“You dirty, rotten liar,”Tony muttered out, clenching his fists together and taking a step forward.

“I am only trying to be of service. Come, let me help you.”McCalbert reached for Natasha’s wrist, obviously gripping it forcefully but still trying to put up the image of being a caring doctor.

“The lady asked you to leave her alone,”Tony responded, walking up and removing the doctor’s hand from her wrist.

McCalbert stared back at Tony with fury in his eyes. “Mr. Stark, she needs to stay here for examinations. I can not allow her-“

That was as far as he got. Before the doctor could finish, Tony’s fist connected with the man’s face, sending him spinning and sprawling onto the small walkway between the cots. He lay in the middle of the floor, unconscious, as Tony flexed his fingers back and forth.

People were looking him up and down and other nurses had gathered, trying to decide what to do. “Yeah, this guy’s not an actual doctor,”Tony spoke to everyone watching while pointing towards the man at his feet.

He then turned back to Natasha, who was looking at him with what appeared to be a grateful smirk. “Didn’t know you could hit so hard,”she mentioned.

“Well, I have to be able to protect myself, right?”Tony replied, cocking his head slightly. He led Natasha out of the hospital, allowing her to use his shoulder for support. They started to walk down the hospital steps when Tony realized that Natasha couldn’t keep going in her current state.

“This isn’t working,”he said, stopping somewhat abruptly.

“Tony, I’m fine, we need to go,”Natasha bit out between winces, pressing the hand that wasn’t on his shoulder to her wound.

Tony tilted his head, formulating an idea in his mind, trying to decide if pitching it was worth being socked in the jaw.

He didn’t have to mention it, however. Natasha noticed the look in his eyes and pieced together what it meant. She shook her head when she finally gave in, realizing that it was the only option. “Jesus—be careful.”

Tony nodded. “Always.”Natasha bent down a little, allowing Tony to get his arm under her legs and pick her up bridal style. Natasha let out a hiss of pain and pursed her lips together, but was otherwise silent. After getting used to her weight and shifting her slightly so she didn’t wince from the pain, Tony started walking down the stairs leading up to the overcrowded hospital.

“Not a word to anyone,”Natasha warned.

“Situation calls for it. And I enjoy living, so we have an agreement,”Tony joked, looking back to make sure the doctor wasn’t following before turning quickly down the road that he had come from. His arms burned and ached from the weight, but he knew that it was a million times better than the alternative.

Halfway back, Natasha leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. The blood on the bandages over her torso had spread. “Ten more minutes, Natasha. Banner had the med table all set up.”

“You guys came to get us?”Natasha asked quietly.

Tony nodded and continued walking. “We weren’t about to leave you to face this by yourself. We found Steve and Clint too, they’re onboard,”he added, pushing past the lump in his throat. He didn’t say what condition they were in, he would break that to Steve and Nat at the same time. He couldn't bear giving that kind of news twice.

Natasha sighed slightly into his shoulder. “Thank you,”she whispered quietly.

“You don’t have to thank me, Nat. You would’ve done the same for us. It’s what family does.”He noticed that she had slipped into unconsciousness and began walking a little faster.

After a few minutes more of walking, Tony shifted Natasha in his grasp so he was barely able to touch the earpiece comm in his ear.

“Banner?”he said, making sure the comms worked.

It took Bruce a few seconds before he responded. “Please say good news,”he replied in a hopeful tone.

“Not amazing, but good. Get your supplies ready, we’ll be there in ten,”Tony said, breaking into a small smile.

Bruce sighed on the other end of the channel. “Alright. Yeah. Sounds good,”he ended abruptly. Tony could hear sounds from Bruce’s end of the comms, meaning that he was already getting everything ready.

Tony tried not to focus on the blood on Natasha’s torso, or how cold she seemed in his arms. She was strong, he knew that, and she had made sure that he knew it. But that didn’t stop him from worrying. One foot in front of the other, and she would survive.

Tony’s heart stopped hammering only once the Quinjet was in sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It definitely felt good writing the gang more or less getting back together after everything that's gone on. Making our way into the second half of the story now, I hope you guys are still enjoying!


	13. Smile

Natasha’s eyes opened again when she started hearing voices. She half expected them to be in her head, they almost always were, and was surprised to find that the voices belonged to her teammates. Tony was cursing as he carried her up the ramp of the jet, Bruce was asking Thor for supplies, and Thor was responding.

“Where do I put her?”Tony asked, gently shifting her again, to which Natasha winced. His voice was pained and thin, but he was still holding her all the same.

“We need to move Steve to the bed so we can get her onto the table. Thor?”that was Bruce.

From her sliver of vision, Natasha could make out Bruce and Thor lifting Steve up, as gingerly as they could, and placing him on one of the beds next to the medical tables. This left one table open, with the other one being occupied by something underneath a sheet. She craned her head up a little, noticing just how limp and pale Steve was. His lower half was covered in bandages and his head lolled to the side when Thor set him down.

“Is he…?”she whispered out, only half conscious. Her voice was dry and cracked when she talked, which only made the worried question come out sounding worse.

“He’s gonna be fine, Natasha. Just needs a break is all,”Bruce assured as he wiped down the table before allowing Tony to place her on it. Natasha hissed slightly at the contact with the cool surface and forced her eyes open more.

“You know Cap. He’s too stubborn to go anywhere. He’ll be up and checking on us in no time,”Tony replied. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Tony was hiding something; he had never been good at lying. He hid it all behind a fake smile and false bravado and excuses that everything was alright when it really wasn’t.

For the first time since she had seen him, Natasha really looked at Tony. Sure, her vision was half clouded and swimming with dizziness, but in the pale light of the Quinjet, Tony didn’t look good. His face was a few shades paler than normal, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and his eyes kept wandering to the lumpy sheet.

Thor came over to her one side, blocking her view of the other table before she could try to figure out what was beneath the sheet. “It is good to see you again, Lady Natasha,”Thor whispered, putting up a small smile. He didn’t look much better than Tony.

“Likewise,”she replied, nodding as much as she could. “Thanks for coming.”

“Couldn’t miss the party!”Tony shouted, walking up to the cockpit and sitting down, where Natasha lost her view of him.

Natasha tilted her head a little to see Bruce shaking his with a slight smile. He gently lifted up Natasha’s arm and attached an IV line to it. “Mind if I…?”he asked almost sheepishly, gesturing to the bloodied bandages around her torso. Natasha shook her head in response, not having the strength to formulate an answer.

Bruce began unwrapping the bandages, placing the spool of now red wrap on the table by her feet. He checked over the wound on the front of her stomach, pursing his lips as he did so. “I need to redo the stitches on the front, probably on the back also,”Bruce said quietly, sighing as he grabbed the medical kit.

Thor glanced over at her wound, giving Natasha a view of the sheet. There was definitely something under it, a shape that seemed familiar, but her muddled mind couldn’t connect her past experiences to it.

“Where’s Clint?”she asked absentmindedly, somehow remembering that Tony had mentioned him earlier. Steve was a few feet away from her, to the right, but she hadn’t seen Clint. Natasha broke her gaze away from the sheet to look at her friends, who had frozen on the spot. The entire Quinjet was silent for a few moments before Bruce picked up a small syringe.

“You probably need some pain stuff, this isn’t going to feel great,”he mentioned, not meeting her gaze.

Natasha watched Bruce dab her arm with antiseptic before she pulled the limb away, not wanting to be unconscious again, even though she was in a safe place. She would rather have her eyes open and endure the pain than wake up completely disoriented a few hours later.

“Natasha, it will really help. This is enough for one hour, that’s it. Not enough to overdo whatever they gave you at the hospital. I can stitch up your wounds and take a look at your ankle without it causing you pain,”Bruce mentioned, stepping back with the needle still in his grasp.

She settled her gaze with Bruce’s. “Where is he?”she repeated, wishing that her cracking voice had more power behind it.

“Natasha,”Thor spoke next. “Please allow Doctor Banner to stitch you up and then we can talk about that after you’re feeling better.”Thor’s tone was pleading, something she had never heard in his voice before.

Natasha turned her attention to the demigod, noticing how he kept staring at the same place on the floor, and how he had stepped back in front of her line of sight. “What’s there to talk about?”she whispered, the last syllable being cut off as she winced in pain. Bruce stood at her side, looking apologetically at the needle that was now in Natasha’s arm.

“Sorry, Natasha,”Bruce sighed, pulling the needle out and setting it aside. With her current state and her attention on Thor, Bruce had been able to administer the drugs. Natasha fought to stay awake, knowing that her fighting was doing nothing. She could feel the world slipping away again and only half fought to hang on.

“What happened?”she murmured as the drugs began to slur her speech. Her eyes closed a few seconds later.

“I am sorry, Natasha,”Thor apologized quietly. It was obvious by his boot steps that he had walked away, probably to the other end of the jet.

Her skin burned and pricked slightly as Bruce cleaned her wound and gently started to stitch it up. Natasha’s head fell to the side as her body began to go limp.

It was only then that she realized Tony hadn’t said a word.

* * *

When the ground beneath him began to shake, Steve jolted awake. Everything around him was swirling and out of focus, immediately making him grab for his head to calm everything down. His arms moved up slowly, but he found that he didn’t have the strength to move them all the way. The limbs lifelessly flopped back down on the bed.

Steve took a few deep breaths, letting his vision clear after a few seconds. He was in one of the cots on the Quinjet, which was now flying. How he had gotten there, he had no idea. His head felt like it had been split in two and his legs…his legs he would rather not be feeling at all. They itched and burned as if someone had taken to them with a thousand knives.

After a minute, he got his arms under him to try and push himself up. Steve got about halfway when a gentle hand was placed on his shoulder. He shifted his vision to see Thor sitting next to him in a chair, looking at him with a sad smile.

“Doctor Banner said no sudden movements,”he explained, and Steve let himself sink back into the sheets. Thor gave Steve a once-over, happy to see the soldier’s eyes open. “I am glad to see that you are awake. You have been unconscious for nearly three hours, and we were starting to get worried.”

“How…?”Steve started, his face contorting into a pained, confused glance. His voice was dry and unused, making him wince just from the way it sounded.

“I found you and carried you back to the jet. Tony went looking for Natasha and brought her back about an hour ago. We started flying once everyone was situated,”Thor said, picking up a small glass of water with a straw in it and handing it to Steve.

Steve slowly encompassed the glass with his left hand and brought the straw to his lips, nodding in appreciation before taking a few small sips. “How is she?”he asked, handing Thor back the glass. From his place in the low bed, he couldn’t see anything past Thor and the base of one of the medical tables.

Thor thought for a few seconds before answering. “A broken ankle, concussion, and a hole in her stomach, but Banner is convinced that she will survive. Natasha is strong and stubborn, like you. She will be alright,”Thor nodded with a slight smile.

“Stubborn?”Steve asked quietly, tilting his head.

Tony walked over from the cockpit and leaned against the frame of the jet. “Yes, you are one stubborn sleeping beauty,”he joked. His tone lacked its usual happy sarcasm, but Steve chalked it up to the horrible situation they found themselves in.

“Nice to see you too, Tony,”Steve smirked back. “Thanks for coming to get us.”

Tony waved a hand at Steve. “You and Nat don’t need to thank us. It’s what family and friends do. Save their superhero teammates during the aftermath of a tsunami. Just a regular…what day is it?”Tony smiled and pulled up a chair at the head of Steve’s bed. It was silent for a few moments before Bruce came around the corner of the jet.

“I’m gone two seconds and everything happens,”he complained in a mocking tone. “Good to see you, Steve. How are you feeling?”Bruce immediately went into doctor mode, checking Steve’s pulse and reflexes.

Steve took a breath, testing to see what hurt and what didn’t. “Head’s a bit foggy, my legs feel like hell. Otherwise okay.”

Bruce stepped back and nodded. “You’ve got a nasty concussion, even for you. Your legs are pretty banged up, and your right knee probably needs surgery, we’ll see when we get you back.”

Steve nodded slowly. “Am I good to sit up?”he asked, feeling somewhat strange with everyone else looking down on him.

“If you can manage it, yeah,”Bruce shrugged. Steve immediately got his hands under himself again, and with some slight support from Thor, got himself into a sitting position on the bed. His back was up against the metal wall and his legs were spread out motionless in front of him.

He took a moment to collect himself and waited for his head to stop spinning from the sudden movement. From the different angle, he could see Natasha laid out on the table in front of him. Her eyes were closed and the majority of her torso was covered in bandages, as was her ankle. While her skin was pale, the steady rise and fall of her chest indicated that for the time being, she was doing alright.

Behind her, on the second table, was a lumpy white sheet. Steve couldn’t exactly make out what it was, which unnerved him.

That was about the time when his confused mind made sense out of something. “Where’s Clint?”he asked suddenly, noticing the absence of his teammate among the others. “You guys found him, right? I mean, he was right next to me…”Steve trailed off, remembering falling unconscious and hitting his head, but nothing afterwards. He looked expectantly at his teammates, who had all suddenly taken interest in the floor.

“Why don’t we, uh, wait about ten minutes or so?”Bruce asked quietly.

“Why?”was Steve’s response. “What’s wrong?”

He turned his attention to Tony, who was shaking his head. “Natasha will be up by then. And this…this is the kind of thing we can’t explain twice. Sorry,”he whispered, running an uneasy hand through his hair.

Steve found himself counting the seconds, half dreading whatever news was about to follow. He had an inkling as to what it could be, but prayed he was wrong.

* * *

Natasha woke up exactly seven minutes later, cursed Bruce for knocking her out in the first place, and then proceeded to ask the exact same question she had before. When her eyes landed on Steve, her face broke out into an expression of sheer relief and joy. After much re-situating, she sat on the bed next to Steve’s feet, leaning up against the side wall as to not aggravate her injury further.

Bruce and Thor pulled up chairs next to the bed while Tony sat on the edge of the medical table, his legs dangling off.

“We’re both here,”Natasha started, “and are somewhat able to comprehend words. So, I’ll ask again, where the hell is Clint?”There was a tinge of pain and worry in her voice that she tried to hide, but Steve was able to pick up on it. It was the same tone that would have been in his if he had asked that question again.

“That is the question…”Tony muttered, placing his hands over his face for a few seconds before letting them drop. “There was a, uh, a complication.”

“What. Happened.”Natasha annunciated, cutting Tony off, needing to know what he was struggling to say.

Thor shifted in his seat. “My fault,”he whispered. “We landed and I went looking for survivors. I found Clint and you,”he pointed to Steve, “but you were unconscious. And Clint, he…knew how bad it was. I tried to take him first, but he refused. Instead, he gave me a note, and told me to give it to you.”

He took out the bloodied and wrinkled note and handed it to Natasha, who looked at it confused, before he continued. “I got Steve back to the jet and flew to get Clint…but I—I wasn’t fast enough.”

The entire team, what was left of it, was silent. “Are you saying what I think you are?”Steve whispered, swallowing thickly as he cast a glance towards Natasha, who looked like she had seen a ghost.

Bruce nodded slowly. “There was nothing we could do. His lungs and ribs collapsed,”he explained, wringing his hands together so tight that his knuckles turned white. He then gestured towards the sheet on the opposite side of the jet, where everyone’s eyes landed.

“No,”Natasha whispered. She shook her head, making the matted red hair move back and forth over her shaking shoulders. “You’re lying. Where is he?”The note was clutched in-between her fingers, as if she already knew what it would say.

“I’m sorry, Natasha,”Thor replied. His voice was broken and quiet.

“Where is he?”she asked again, her voice rising in pitch.

Steve could only stare at the sheet, imagining what was under it. Part of him wanted to see Clint again, wanted some sort of closure. Another part knew that if he saw Clint, his body, lifeless and cold on the Quinjet, he would never be able to un-see it. Instead, he just stared. Clint was gone because he had been unconscious and hadn’t been able to say anything in Clint’s defense.

“He told me to remind you that this isn’t your fault,”Thor added, looking to Steve as if he could read his thoughts. “You being awake would not have changed the outcome. He most likely knew that you had a better chance of survival.”

_Survival._ That was what this all came down to. Who was too injured, and who wasn’t. Who wouldn’t survive and who would.

Steve closed his eyes and opened them, begging and praying for this all to be a dream. He looked down at the floor and looked back up, unable to tear his gaze away from the white sheet. _Clint_ _’_ _s body,_ he reminded himself. He would never again see Clint smile or save his life with a well-placed arrow. He would never hear Clint’s laugh or bad jokes or his complaining or snarky comments that could keep up with Tony. He would never worry over where Clint was or how injured he was. He would never again bark at the archer to take his pain meds and receive a smirk and a middle finger. He would never see Clint smile ever again. That was what got to him.

It was only then that Steve realized that he was forgetting to breathe and that the wetness on his face was caused by tears. His breaths came out in short, stuttering sounds as he fought to not sob completely.

_He would never again see Clint_ _’_ _s smile._

Steve gradually turned his attention away from the medical table and to the rest of his team. Everyone was looking at the floor with tears in their eyes. Tony stood up a few seconds later and wiped his eyes while making his way to the cockpit. Bruce followed silently a minute later, and Thor soon walked away to spend some time alone.

“He can’t just…be gone,” Natasha whispered, breaking the heavy silence that had settled over the Quinjet. “He can’t be.”

Steve looked down and shook his head in response, not knowing what to say. He gently moved his wrapped legs off of the bed so that he could sit up against the wall next to Natasha. She looked at him with utter helplessness and despair in her eyes. Tears slid down her pale cheeks and she made no move to wipe them away.

“He can’t be,” she repeated. “He can’t…he won’t…he—“ Natasha paused for a second and pursed her lips together. “I never got to say goodbye.” She was clutching the letter so tightly in-between her fingers that Steve swore it would rip. Her entire body was shaking from blood loss, shock, and overall pain. He had never seen her so…vulnerable.

Steve waited a few seconds before moving closer to her and wrapping his arms around her in a hug. It was a foreign action to him; Natasha had never taken too kindly to touching and coddling. But he knew that if she became isolated and withdrew into herself, she would never be the same.

So instead, he sat next to her on the bed, ignoring his own screaming injuries, with one arm around her and the other one smoothing her hair in a calming motion. He was surprised that when a few seconds later, she reciprocated and leaned into him, taking short breaths to try and calm herself down. After a few minutes, the shaking stopped.


	14. Knowing You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! :)

Steve had been through plenty of long nights in his life. Countless nights spent without sleep, wheezing in and out because his pneumonia-stricken lungs simply couldn’t get enough air. He wondered if each breath would be his last, but he always saw the sunrise to signal that the long night was over.

That soon switched to even longer nights overseas. The nights would be lit up with artillery fire and the usually calm air around them would be pierced with the cracks of bullets. The Commandos were never in the major fights, but they weren’t far from them. Although they never complained about how sleep-deprived they were, every single man knew that they had been awake all night, praying that the next shell wouldn’t land within fifty feet of their small camp.

Long nights were spent awake worrying about Bucky and replaying his death over and over and over in his head. Long nights he spent so cold he couldn’t walk due to the shuddering. Long nights up sketching when the ghosts wouldn’t leave him alone. Long nights spent in the gym, or training, or bouncing a ball up against the wall in the communal level, sometimes joined by Natasha or Tony or Clint, who shared his level of sleeplessness.

Steve Rogers had been through his fair share of long nights in his less than thirty total years of actual existence. Sure, time-wise he was approaching one hundred (Tony liked to remind him of that), but in actual years conscious, he hadn’t hit thirty. As they flew back to New York, Tony pushing the jet as fast as it would go, Steve could have sworn that they weren’t even moving. Everything was simply stopped.

Natasha was out cold on his shoulder, having stayed up a little over an hour before her injuries had gotten the better of her. Tony was up front, Bruce and Thor were probably sleeping in the back and Clint was…where he had been since Thor had gotten him.

No amount of staring on Steve’s part seemed to wake Clint up. No glances or blurry blinks would change the position of the sheet, or the man that lay under it.

Five hours into the journey back, everything was completely and utterly quiet, except for the slight hum of the engines. His body would burn through any sedatives they had on the jet, so he was stuck in a state of dazed, painful consciousness until they landed. Steve was itching for something, anything, to do, other than to stare at the sheet. He cast a blurry glance towards their lockers on the side of the jet and slowly an idea came to him.

“Tony,” he whispered, not sure if he would be heard, but also not wanting to wake Natasha up.

Tony appeared not a second later, looking slightly flustered. While he didn’t look quite as pale, it was obvious that he hadn’t been sleeping either. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is Nat okay?” he asked hurriedly.

Steve put up a weak hand in response. “We’re all good,” Steve replied.

“Jesus, Steve. After this kinda day, you’re going to give me a heart attack,” Tony muttered, running a hand over his face. “What’s up?”

“In my locker,” Steve directed, as Tony immediately headed over and opened Steve’s compartment. “There’s a pad of paper and a small bag of pencils.” Tony held up each item, to which Steve nodded, and he brought them over, laying them carefully in the captain’s lap.

“Thanks,” Steve replied, giving Tony a weak smile.

“You know Banner will kill you if you don’t sleep a little,” Tony warned.

“I don’t think anyone’s actually sleeping.”

Tony paused for a second and nodded. “Natasha’s out. Keep an eye on her?”

“You don’t have to ask twice,” was Steve’s reply as he quietly unzipped the case of pencils and turned the pad to a new page.

“Attention folks, we have an artist on board,” Tony said next in a somewhat light tone. Humor, trying to cover soul-deep hurt. Steve knew that facet of Tony’s defense mechanisms well. “We’re about two hours out. Bruce called in some…Dr. Cho lady to help out. I don’t know her, but he trusts her. You guys will be in good hands.”

Steve nodded again, not able to express how thankful he was that his friends had come back. He simply sat there, gazing up at Tony with a small smile on his face. The inventor seemed to understand, as he gently placed a hand on Steve’s shoulder before letting it fall away and returning to the cockpit.

Steve then turned his attention to the blank piece of paper, already knowing what he was about to draw, and started outlining as much as his painful joints would allow.

* * *

_“I’ve tried the whole punching bag thing. Doesn’t really work for me.”_

_Steve’s fists immediately stopped their relentless bashing into the bag, letting it swing back and forth on the hook as he pushed a piece of damp hair out of his face. The clock on the wall read seven minutes after three in the morning, marking almost an hour that Steve had been in the training area._

_He smirked, walking over to his duffel bag and unwrapping his hands. “I don’t think Stark likes it either. He keeps having to buy new ones,” Steve said, motioning to the two punching bags in the corner of the room that were still leaking sand._

_“No match for Captain America and his fists of fury,” Clint joked, walking over to Steve, his footsteps not making a sound on the wood floors. “Can’t sleep?”_

_Steve shrugged slightly and zipped up his bag. “The usual,” was his short explanation. “I could ask you the same thing.”_

_“Yeah, but we both know the answer,” Clint replied, the smirk still stuck on his face. “C’mon, let’s see if something else works out a little better.”_

_Clint led Steve to the other end of the training area and opened the door which led to the archery range. There was already a bow next to the wall, and several dozen arrows stuck into targets all over the room. Clint was just as sleepless as Steve._

_“This one’s about your size,” Clint muttered, pulling a bow down from the wall and handing it to the soldier. Steve took the weapon awkwardly in his hands, feeling the weight and pulling back the string a little._

_“I’m no good with bows,” Steve began._

_Clint promptly cut him off. “Doesn’t matter if you’re good or not. Do you have to be good to beat the shit out of a bag? Not really. This, my friend, is a matter of shooting something.”_

_“That’s it?” Steve asked, not seeing where Clint was going with it all._

_“That’s it,” Clint affirmed. He picked up the bow by the door and spun it in his grasp before reaching for an arrow that was already in the quiver on his back. In one single, fluid motion he had the arrow out, on the string, in midair, and impacting the head of a dummy forty feet away._

_“Points for impressiveness,” Steve smiled._

_“It’s not about that,” Clint shrugged. “See that target?” he asked, pointing to the dummy, to which Steve nodded. “Not a target. That’s Loki. That’s the asshole in the circus. That’s the guy that made me get twelve stitches in my side on a mission in the freaking desert. That’s the maniac that threatened my friends. Not a target,” he restated._

_Steve hefted the bow again and nodded slightly, still somewhat confused._

_“It’s not about how good the shot is here. Sure, for me, it’s practice and mind help. For you, you’re no archer. Shields, guns, brute strength, those are your things. This is about you envisioning whatever is keeping you up and putting an arrow through it. If you miss, you miss, no biggie, you still beat it,” Clint explained before pulling out another arrow. Without taking his eyes off Steve, he turned his arms to the right and shot another dummy in the chest._

_“Kill shot? No. Is one more of my ghosts dead? Hell yeah.” Clint handed Steve an arrow and helped him nock it, then pointed him towards a dummy. After a few seconds of adjusting Steve’s grip, he allowed him to pull back the string. “Left arm down a little, fingers more relaxed,” he instructed._

_Steve followed and aimed the arrow at the target._

_“Doesn’t matter if you hit the ceiling or the floor or the dummy. Just not me, please,” he joked with a slight laugh. “Picture whatever’s keeping you up. I want you to take a snapshot in your mind and frame it. You let the arrow go, no matter where it lands, and you shatter that snapshot into a million teeny tiny little pieces. Then you do it again, and again, until the memory no longer burns the back of your eyelids.”_

_Steve closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. He envisioned the cold ice of the Arctic coming to meet him, blue and white and terrifying. He froze the memory at the moment right before impact. Another breath, and he let the arrow fly. He heard it impact something, and imagined the memory falling away like snow until there was nothing but the training room left._

_“Foot shots hurt, man,” Clint smirked, gesturing to the dummy, which had an arrow sticking out of its foot. “Not bad. Like I said, shots don’t matter. Memories, better or worse?”_

_Steve took another breath and let it out slowly. “Less cold,” he replied after a few seconds and cast Clint a grin._

_“There we go! Don’t stop now! I don’t know about you, but the image of Tony cooking and setting the kitchen on fire, again, is making it hard for me to sleep,” he laughed, letting another arrow fly. It reached its mark, just like all the others had._

_They spent the rest of the night filling the dummies, and sometimes the floor, with arrows. They laughed and talked some, but they mostly reminded each other that they weren’t alone, and that everyone had ghosts._

_When Steve walked out of the training room after a night without sleep, he was smiling. When he looked behind him, ghosts weren’t peeking out around the corner and he didn’t need to thaw out from the cold._

_It became a weekly tradition for them, driving the ghosts away by shooting arrows at their demons._

* * *

“Natasha,” a voice whispered. “Nat.”

She gradually opened her eyes, sighing as she did so. Her head and torso and ankle all screamed together in a chorus of pain. When her vision cleared slightly, she looked ahead of her to see Tony standing in front, glancing at her worriedly.

“We just landed. Medical team is outside. Steve’s already down, they needed to look at his legs and all that,” he explained quietly.

“And everyone else?” Natasha asked, shifting a little in the bed, cursing herself for falling asleep sitting up.

“Bruce is helping out, and Thor is supervising. I’m here to get you down there and to medical. Had to wake you up though, first.” Tony caught Natasha’s glance and pursed his lips together, knowing what she meant by ‘everyone’. “He’s still here. People will be here in twenty to pick him up.”

Natasha did nothing for a few seconds, and afterwards she slowly nodded. “Will we…see him after?” she said in a worried tone.

“Probably. If that note of yours says something about it, we’ll adhere to that, too. Have you read it?”

Natasha shook her head and clutched the worn piece of paper in-between her fingers.

“We need to get you medical attention, Nat,” Tony said after a few moments of silence, to which she shook her head again. “I know you don’t like doctors, but…”

“It’s not that,” Natasha whispered. “Can I…can I get five minutes with him?” she asked, almost embarrassed by how pleading her tone sounded.

Tony was quiet for a moment before he nodded, knowing that she needed it and he wouldn’t be able to talk her down. “Need help up?” Natasha glanced up at him and nodded in reply. He gently hooked an arm around her shoulders and helped to lift her off the bed.

The sudden change in pressure and spacing made Natasha’s head spin, but after a few painful, limping steps, Tony stood her next to the table. She leaned on it for support and gestured in thanks.

“You need anything or feel like you’re about to pass out, I’ll be right outside,” he assured before disengaging his arm and walking slowly down the ramp of the jet. Natasha listened closely to his footsteps, which stopped at the very end of the ramp.

She waited a few moments before looking down at the note in her hands. Carefully, as if she were afraid it would crumble to dust, Natasha opened the bloodstained piece of paper. It was from the small motel that they had been spending the night at during the mission. Where he had found a pen, she had no idea, and the handwriting was shaky but definitely readable.

Natasha read through the note four times in all, making sure she got everything and being careful to not let any of her tears fall onto the paper. They silently made their way down her cheeks as she folded the paper back up and stuck it into her pocket. She took a glance at the sheet, and knew immediately that talking to a blank, crinkled piece of fabric would do her no good.

With shaking hands, Natasha removed the sheet from around Clint’s face, casting her gaze away for a second before bringing her eyes up. The corner of his mouth was turned upwards in a slight smirk, which only made her eyes burn more. Clint looked relatively peaceful, with not as much blood on his face as she would have expected. It was paler and stiffer than normal, which was to be expected. She drew back the sheet on one side to reveal his right arm, which appeared to be normal enough.

She ran a gentle hand along the archer’s fingers, getting used to their cold temperature before closing her hand over his.

“You always said you would be smiling when you met death,” Natasha said quietly with a pained laugh, her eyes glancing over her dead comrade. “Knowing you, I should have known it would be the truth.”

She let the silence settle between them for a few moments, half expecting him to reply, and knowing deep down that he wouldn’t. “Knowing you…” she repeated. “Has made my life so much more…worth it. I’m not just talking the saving people and the late night pizza parties and the banter.”

Natasha gave a slight shrug, grasping his hand a little tighter. “I’m talking about…I don’t know where I’d be if you hadn’t saved me, brought me back, and told me that I was worth something. You gave me hope when I had none myself. You were the first person that got through to me, and I allowed myself to become friends with. And I can not thank you enough for that. There were countless hours spent fighting next to you, with you, and sometimes against you. I will forever cherish those hours because I will never get another.”

She paused for a moment to stop the choking sound in her chest and instead pursed her lips together, bowing her head. “Knowing you, Clint Barton, Hawkeye, marksman supreme, self-proclaimed master of sarcasm and comebacks, partner, friend, father, husband,” Natasha got out the last two just barely. “It has been a privilege. And I thank you for that, and wish that I had thanked you before.”

Natasha wiped her eyes with her free hand, knowing that it would do no good. “I’ll get you where you need to go. I’ll look after them, _all_ of them. It’s the least you deserve.” She took one more look at his face, reminding herself that this was probably the last time she would see him, that this was the last time she would get to talk to him by herself, and she still couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Instead, she straightened up and allowed her tears to drip on the sheet as she pulled it back over his head and disengaged her grasp from his.

“This isn’t goodbye,” she whispered with a cracking voice. “I will see you again.”

_“It had better be later rather than sooner,”_ she could practically hear Clint replying in her head. Not even bothering to wipe away the tears, Natasha called for Tony, who ran up the ramp immediately. He didn’t comment on how she looked, or how the sheet had moved. He simply helped her out of the Quinjet to where the medical team was waiting.

* * *

_Nat,_

_As you can probably tell by the shitty handwriting and the blood marks and the fact that you’re not getting this note from me, something bad has happened. I won’t go into detail because you probably know what happened better than I do. I don’t know how much longer I have, so I’ll cut to the chase. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving without giving you the chance to say goodbye. I’m sorry for everything that you will go through next. I’m sorry for what I’m about to ask you to do._

_We’ve talked about this before, too many times, and you know what I want to happen. Now the tough part. I would like everyone else to know too. It’ll come out sooner or later, and I’d rather not have the realization a few months later that ‘Clint died and we only now just found out that he has a family’. I know what I’m asking you to do, and I’m sorry._

_But you shouldn’t be. Don’t carry around the guilt of never being able to repay me for saving you. I know you, Nat, you’re just as bad as Steve sometimes. Please, don’t do it. We’ve saved each other so many times over the years that we’ve both lost count. Hell, I probably owe you. You have no debt to repay, nothing to make up for._

_My point being this: this sucks, and it probably always will. But you’re the toughest, strongest person I know. You’ll get through it. Lean on the others, let them lean on you, let them help, and help them even when they say they don’t need it. You guys need each other. Take care of everyone, and take care of yourself, Nat._

_I’ll never be far away._

_~Clint_


	15. Not Just Simple Sketches

Getting out of the jet proved to be a somewhat difficult task. Natasha was gently slid to the side slightly to leave room for Steve to move. He couldn’t decide if her not waking up was a good or a bad thing. He tried to put weight on his legs first, but Tony was forced to catch him and sit him back down.

His knee could hold no weight and his right leg was not much better. After the world stopped spinning, Thor was suddenly by his side.

“I am afraid I will have to carry you down to the medical team. Their gurney will not have enough space in here,” he said, almost apologetically.

Steve shook his head. “I appreciate it, Thor,” he replied genuinely. While the idea of being carried down was certainly not appealing, there was no other way and no sense to give Thor any grief over it.

The Asgardian simply nodded. Tony was still in the cockpit, doing final shut downs and Bruce was down briefing the medical team. “This will hurt,” Thor warned before he got his arms under Steve’s knees and picked him up as gently as he could.

Pain immediately erupted in his knee from being jostled, making him wince in agony and let out a few short breaths. He tried to not let on how much it hurt, as it wasn’t Thor’s fault. Thor carried the injured soldier as quickly as he could down to ramp to where the team was waiting.

After a minute and some shuffling around by the team, Steve was painfully placed onto the gurney and wheeled inside the base. Thor disappeared back into the jet and reappeared a few moments later, jogging to catch up with the medical team.

“To pass the time,” he mentioned. Thor gently placed Steve’s closed sketchpad and pencil case on the bed with him. Steve ran his fingers over the paper and nodded at Thor in thanks.

Thor nodded back with a small smile stretched across his features. It was the last thing Steve saw before the doors to the medical wing were pushed open and Thor vanished behind them.

* * *

One major downside of being a super soldier meant normal strength pain killers didn’t work on him. Instead, Steve had to grit his teeth and push his head back against the pillow as the doctors and nurses began unwinding the bandages and taking looks at his knee. They started an IV in his arm for fluids and whatever other kind of medication might be able to help. His sketchpad and pencils were placed on the stand next to the bed, within arms reach. Fifteen minutes or so after he got there, his legs were clean and wrapped in fresh bandages. Now there was only his knee to deal with.

He could see them looking at it, occasionally touching it or jotting down notes. After a few minutes of hushed discussion, the head doctor came over to him.

“I’m Dr. Jacobs. Mr. Stark called me here to assist Dr. Cho and her team,” he introduced curtly, stopping next to the bed right next to Steve’s head.

“Nice to meet you,” Steve rasped out with a pained smile. “What’s all the hush hush about?”

“Yes, sorry about that,” he nodded. “There is a lot going on with your knee. Torn ligaments and tendons for sure, and with your healing ability, we are worried that it may have tried to heal itself incorrectly, thus causing more damage. We are waiting on Dr. Banner and Dr. Cho, who are hopefully almost finished with something that will have the strength to knock you out so that we can perform surgery, in simple terms.”

Steve nodded slowly. The drugs on top of his concussion were making everything fuzzy, so he didn’t ask for what the complicated terms would have been. He lay there in the bed, counting the tiles on the ceiling.

Another ten minutes passed before Bruce walked into the room with a woman, whom Steve assumed was the other doctor. “Got it, this should work,” he said quietly, passing it over to Jacobs, who then added it to Steve’s IV. Bruce came over to Steve next, worriedly checking over his injured friend.

“How you holding up?” Bruce asked

Steve shrugged as much as he could. “As to be expected,” was his reply.

Bruce then snapped his fingers and turned to the woman. “Steve, this is Dr. Cho,” he introduced, pointing to her. She gave a small wave, which Steve responded to with a smile. “We were able to make some heavy-duty painkillers, should pull you under for a few hours so they can fix your knee up, alright?”

Steve nodded again and blinked his eyes lazily. Things were already starting to spin as if he was losing his grip on reality. He had so seldom been put under; it was still a strange feeling.

“They’ll take good care of you, Steve,” Bruce assured, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Steve had no doubts in his mind about everyone’s capabilities, so he chalked the assurance up to Bruce making sure he felt comfortable.

A few more numbers were shouted out and the gurney started to move again. Soon enough, Steve lost track of the winding hallways inside the tower and allowed himself to be pulled under.

* * *

When he came to a few hours later, he was in a recovery bed in the medical wing of the tower. His vision took a few minutes to settle, but when it did the first thing he noticed was the absence of pain. The stabbing agony in his legs and head had faded to a dull throb. For the first time in days, he wasn’t seeing black spots every single time he tried to move. Steve got his hands under him and gently pushed himself up, sighing and wincing as he settled back against the pillows.

“How are you feeling?” Bruce’s voice startled him as he came out from behind the curtain. He walked cautiously over to Steve, jotted down a few numbers, and sat down in the set next to his bed.

“Like I got hit by a car instead of an airplane,” Steve said with a slight smirk. His cut cheek stung at the action, but he didn’t mind much. “Thanks.”

Bruce waved his hand slightly and shook his head. “No need for thanks. Just helping out where I can,” he replied.

Steve nodded and silence settled between the two men for a few moments, interrupted only by the beeping of various monitors. Steve finally broke the silence. “How’s everyone else?”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Nat got out of surgery a few minutes ago, so Thor’s keeping her company, waiting for her to come around and all that. She’s going to be fine,” he assured quickly. “Tony’s down in the lab working on tracking down some…doctor guy he knocked out when he found Nat.”

Steve looked to Bruce, confused. Tony wasn’t the kind of person to knock someone out, let alone a doctor.

“I’ll tell you more when you’re feeling a bit better,” Bruce ended, to which Steve nodded in acceptance. He then pointed to Steve’s leg. “Most of the gashes should be healed in a few days. Surgery on your knee went fine, but it may take a few weeks to get all the way back to normal, so it’s in a heavy duty brace for the time being. A cast wouldn’t do much good with your other injuries and your healing factor. No weight is to be applied on it, understood?”

The captain nodded again and Bruce stood up. “Any idea when I’m okay to get out?” he asked curiously, tilting his head.

“So eager to leave?” Bruce chuckled.

Steve shrugged slightly. “Don’t like hospitals,” was his explanation.

“We’ll see how you progress. Maybe a few days,” Bruce finally said. “Someone will be in to check on you every half hour, I’ll stop by every hour. You need anything,” he pointed to a button on the wall next to the bed, “press that, someone will be here in less than a minute,” he instructed.

Steve gave one final nod, which Bruce replied to with a small smile before making his way past the curtain, leaving Steve by himself with the machines. He didn’t dare to move his legs just yet, so instead he twisted his body to the side to grab his pad of paper and pencils, and busied himself with drawing.

* * *

It took four days for Steve to finally convince Bruce that he needed to move. After much back and forth, Bruce finally agreed, handing Steve a pair of crutches and accompanying him to the communal floor. Not being able to use his left leg was a pain, but Steve had never been one to complain. He got himself situated on one of the couches while Bruce silently brought him a glass of water.

“Let JARVIS know if you need anything,” he said, passing the glass off to Steve, who accepted it gratefully. “You don’t take it easy and I’ll have you right back in that bed, you understand?” Bruce asked, only half joking.

“Yes sir,” Steve replied. Bruce clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder and walked to the elevator, letting it take him back down to the medical level.

He sat in silence for three or so hours, the scratches of his pencil the only noises on the floor. When the elevator doors opened again, he raised his head, half expecting to see Bruce or Tony stepping out. Instead he heard the sound of crutches that exactly matched his own. Steve sat up straighter, peeking over the couch, grinning when he saw Natasha hobbling her way over.

“At ease, soldier, I’m not armed,” Natasha joked, wincing as she pushed the crutches forward, coming to stand above Steve.

“You and I both know I don’t believe that,” Steve replied with a smirk, closing his sketchbook and sitting up fully to scoot over and make room for her on the couch.

Natasha rolled her eyes and disengaged her arms from the crutches, sliding down onto the couch with him. She tried to hide the wince on her face as she sat down, but Steve could see the pain reflected in her eyes. “Always the gentleman,” she cut out.

Steve let her get situated for a moment before bringing his eyes up to look at her. “How are you doing?” he asked quietly.

Natasha stayed silent for a few moments. “Good enough to get out of the medical ward before I should be,” she replied with a lazy smirk. “Haven’t had a good experience with them recently.”

Steve scrunched his eyebrows together. “Does this have something to do with that…doctor Tony is looking into?”

She looked at him somewhat confused for a few seconds before nodding. “More on that once we get everyone else together,” she sighed. Her gaze was somewhat distant as she replied.

Steve shifted so he could look at her directly. “Nat. How are you? Really?”

Natasha brought her eyes up to look at him and she shrugged. She could have lied her way out, or pushed him away, but she was honestly too tired for either of those options. So she simply shrugged. “About as you would expect,” she admitted a few seconds later with a sad smile on her face.

“Think that goes for all of us.”

Natasha nodded again, dropping her gaze, where it landed on Steve’s sketchpad on the coffee table. “Is that…?”

Steve picked up the pad and sat it in his lap. “A…hobby, I guess you could call it,” he shrugged.

Natasha gestured to the paper. “Mind if I…?”

Steve took a few moments before shaking his head and handing the pad over. If she could be honest with him, then he could be honest with her. He watched with aslight amount of anxious embarrassment as she thumbed through ten or so drawings, smiling as she did so. “Steve, these are amazing,” she whispered, not drawing her eyes from the page. Images of Bucky and Peggy and the Commandos and his current family all flashed by.

“They’re just sketches,” Steve said, shaking his head.

Natasha got to the last one and stopped. She studied it with a mix of amazement and hurt in her eyes. “No, they’re not,” she said, running her fingers along the page gently, as to not damage the design.

Steve had only gotten around to coloring half of it and cleaning up what was remaining of the rough drawing. In short, the drawing was of Clint. It was sketched in the way that it was looking at Clint from the left side, as if someone had taken a photo of him. He was wearing a simple light blue shirt and sweatpants, his go-to outfit whenever he was training before the sun came up.

Clint was smirking, his trademark expression that said: ‘I know how badass I am and now you do too, if you didn’t already’. His bow was held in his left hand, his right still up as if he were pulling the string, which was taut. In the back of the picture there was a target with four arrows perfectly surrounding the bullseye and one right in the middle. His hair was slightly tousled and Steve hadn’t missed the bags under his eyes. He didn’t look perfect in the drawing, because he wasn’t perfect in real life.

But the smirk, the gleam in his eyes, and everything about the drawing was wholly him.

Natasha looked back at Steve, which was when he noticed the gleam of tears in her eyes. “Not sketches,” she repeated, having seen the ones of the people he knew before he crashed the plane back into the ice. “They’re memories.”

Steve took a moment to let it sink in before he nodded slowly. Natasha closed the pad and handed it back to him, which he took gently. “I couldn’t sleep. He found me in the gym and brought me down to the archery range. He, ah, helped me with some stuff,” Steve explained quietly, placing the pad back on the coffee table.

“Barton the therapist. His patented method is letting you shoot things,” Natasha chuckled, blinking the wetness from her eyes.

“It was a pretty good method,” he replied with a half smile, turning something over in his brain; the one thing he hadn’t included in the drawing because he hadn’t known about it at the time.

Natasha must have seen the gears turning, because she finally asked, “What is it?”

Steve raised his eyes, knowing there was no point in wondering by himself. “Did you know about his…deafness?” he asked carefully. He assumed that Natasha already knew, given how much the two assassins had been through, but he needed to be sure.

Natasha nodded slowly. “How did you find out? He doesn’t tell that to anyone.”

“Water damaged his one hearing aid. When I found him, he kept cocking his head, and I knew something was up. He eventually pulled it out and showed me,” he replied, noticing how Natasha hung onto every word of the story. “Why didn’t he tell anyone?”

She bit the inside of her cheek for a second, formulating a response. “It can be seen as a weakness,” she said slowly. “Enemies can use it against him, obviously. But he didn’t want the fact that he was deaf to serve as a handicap on the team. He didn’t want anyone feeling bad for him or doubting his abilities.”

Steve nodded in understanding, knowing the feeling from his own personal experience. “I think it makes what he did accomplish even more impressive,” he admitted.

“Maybe he was just afraid all of you would be too awed by his presence afterwards,” Natasha joked, leaning back into the couch a little more. “He’s a spy, Steve. Spies keep secrets.”

“He didn’t have a glass eye or a super secret hideout that nobody knew about, did he?” Steve asked, meaning for it to be a light joke back. However, the second after the words had left his mouth, he knew that he had said something wrong. Natasha was staring off into space, taking breaths to try and calm herself down. “Nat, I’m sorry,” he started apologizing, but Natasha shook her head.

“No, it’s okay,” she said in a small voice, not looking at him. “You didn’t know. No one did. Or does.” Steve watched as she pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. It was well-worn and bloodied, and Steve could only assume that it had been Clint’s.

“Natasha?” His question went unanswered as she read through the paper. He watched her eyes scan it, as if she hoped that she had missed something. She eventually folded it up and held it between her fingers.

She let out a long sigh and shook her head again. “JARVIS,” she announced.

“What can I do for you, Miss Romanoff?” the AI replied quickly.

“Tell everyone to meet up on the communal floor in the next ten minutes. Nothing urgent, don’t scare them. I…have something I need to tell them,” Natasha’s voice cracked at the last sentence.

“Will do,” JARVIS replied, and was silent.

Steve looked over to Natasha, his heart pounding at what she knew but they didn’t. When she brought her eyes up to meet his again, they were filled with tears, and Steve knew that it was nothing good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hands up if you guys can guess what the news is going to be! Some heavy feels coming up. Hoping you guys are still enjoying! :)


	16. Silence

Natasha shifted a little on the couch so her elbows could come to rest on her knees. She could feel Steve’s gaze on her, and the worry that was practically radiating off of him. However, she didn’t raise her eyes to look back at him. Natasha took the next five minutes trying to mentally prepare herself for what she was about to say. How the hell could she say it? ‘So, one of your closest allies and teammates is dead, and by the way he has a secret family, with kids, that he never told you about. Okay, go back to your lives.’ It just didn’t work like that.

Tony was the first one to appear, and he didn’t seem disturbed or scared, which meant that JARVIS had relayed that it was not an emergency. Still, he came over to the couch and looked at her, stopping a few feet away.

“You guys okay?” he asked quietly.

Natasha sighed, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor. She didn’t nod or shake her head. “You may want to sit down. I’ve got some stuff to tell you guys,” Natasha replied.

Tony opted to lean against the arm of a chair next to the couch. “I’ve got JARVIS tracking our missing psycho doctor,” he mentioned after a few moments.

“It can wait,” Natasha murmured.

Thor came in next, followed closely by Bruce. They both looked at their seated comrades and took that as a sign, sitting down themselves on whatever seat was open.

“What is this about?” Thor asked, breaking the uneasy silence that had fallen over the team.

Natasha took a shaky breath in and raised her head, keeping her elbows on her knees. “It’s about Clint,” she started.

Everyone in the room collectively held their breath. If worry was a flammable substance, a match strike would have set the entire Tower on fire.

“He’s in cryo, Natasha, for the time being. You know that,” Bruce said, tilting his head, not understanding.

“I mean…it’s about him, but it’s not about him,” she said, looking to Bruce and chewing on the inside of her lip. “Something…you all need to hear and then help me with.”

The silence settled over her words as everyone waited for what she had to say next. “He—he had a lot of secrets,” she opted to start with.

“He was a spy, Natasha, we know. Did some stuff he’s not proud of, but we all have. That doesn’t change anything,” Tony replied, a look of confusion crossing his face as well.

“That’s the thing,” she said. Natasha looked around at her team of broken friends with a sad smile on her face. “This is the one thing he was proud of.”

God, talking about him in the past tense was hard. She never imagined using the word ‘was’ when referring to Clint. She had prayed that she would never have to.

No one talked, out of both respect and apprehension at what Natasha could possibly say. While the air around them was quiet, her mind was speeding a mile a minute. Different phrases and stories and possible lead ins cluttered her brain. She couldn’t pick one and run with it; there were simply too many. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a few seconds, and opened them again. Natasha knew what she would say.

“There’s this farmhouse in the Midwest,” she said, her voice cracking as she began. Everyone leaned closer, wondering what a farmhouse had to do with any of this. “Two stories, lots of windows, chipped white paint with a light green roof.” As she went on explaining the house, pictures of it formed in her mind and memories played out in front of her eyes. “Open space, trees, no buildings in sight aside from the shed, and no road leading in or out. Completely off the map, and untraceable.”

She changed position so that she could lean back against the couch, trying to forget that everyone’s eyes were on her. “Inside it’s nice. Warm and homey. The wooden floorboards creak slightly when you walk on them. There are children’s drawings on the tables and legos behind the sofas. There’s a basket of laundry waiting to be done sitting on the table.” Natasha pursed her lips together, wishing her eyes would stop watering so she could simply finish the damn story.

“Outside, in the back, there are hay bales set up a hundred feet back with targets painted on them.”

She could hear Steve suck in a breath next to her and turned her gaze towards him. His face was white and his eyes seemed to scream in recognition.

“And shooting at those hay bales, are two kids. Cooper and Lila, his younger sister. You see, they want to grow up to be just like dad.” A tear fell from her eye onto her cheek and she brought up a shaking hand to wipe it away. “Their mom, Laura, sits on the back porch, berating them to be careful. And their dad says it’s alright, he’s watching out for them. Nothing can get past him. He helps them line up their bows and instructs them how to release. He yelps in joy when Cooper nicks the outside of the paper target. ‘Good aim runs in the family!’ he yells, and gives his son a high five for a job well done.”

Natasha’s voice petered out and she shook her head. The memory was playing itself out right in that very room. She could hear the thwack of the bowstring as Clint demonstrated how to adjust for wind. She could hear Lila squealing with joy as Clint picked her up and onto his shoulders so that she could see higher. She could hear Laura laughing from the porch, taking photos with her camera to treasure forever.

She looked around at the room of men, friends, comrades, brothers in arms, and saw the exact same look she had on her face. They were all staring at the floor, trying to process what she just said.

“You all know why no one else knew. He couldn’t risk anyone with ill intentions finding out.” Tony nodded slowly in understanding. “He didn’t tell you either, because he never expected this to happen. He wanted to make it a surprise one year, or use it as a safe house if worse came to worse. He trusted you all with his life, you know that. He just wasn’t one to take chances. But he didn’t want you to find out like this. I’m sorry.”

All at once, everyone was shaking their heads. It was silent for a few more moments before Steve spoke up. “Natasha?” She turned towards him and nodded slightly. “You don’t need to explain for him, or apologize. It was his choice.”

“We all understand,” Tony added. Bruce and Thor nodded in agreement as well. “Would it have been less…emotional to know before? Hell yeah. But this is the way things are playing out, so we’ll play along as best we can.”

“How…how old are the kids?” Bruce asked quietly, guilt in his voice.

“Twelve and eight,” Natasha replied, the strength of her tone matching his.

She heard Thor take in a slow breath and sigh in the chair across from her. “It’s no one’s fault. He wanted everyone to know that.” Natasha looked at Steve and Thor mainly, but knew that she should have been looking to herself too. Everyone in the room somewhat blamed themselves, even though they had nothing to do with it. The only guilty thing was the world itself, which wasn’t a good entity to blame.

“Yeah,” Steve whispered. Natasha pretended to not notice how he wiped a quick hand over his eyes as well. “How can we help?” Getting an objective in mind would help to ease everyone’s minds, at least for the time being.

“Get him home,” Natasha replied in a broken tone. “We talked a lot about what we wanted to happen after we…left, and swore that if one went before the other, we would complete their last wish,” she added with a slight shrug.

“Anything that can be done, we will do,” Thor assured with a slight nod, his eyes back on Natasha, waiting for what she would say.

Natasha took another breath in, trying to calm her racing heart. “He wanted to go back home. There’s a spot, a few miles out from his house, that he told me about. His family needs to say goodbye,” she whispered.

The realization came crashing down on her harder than the tsunami had.

Only part of Clint’s family knew about him. His actual, blood related family, still had no idea. She still had to break the news to Laura. She had to tell Lila and Cooper that their father would never be coming back home.

No more archery lessons or stories. No more full family trips with Clint’s off time. No more homework help late at night that Clint had no idea how to do anyways. No more worrying about him to come home. No more hugs or reassurances.

He would never see his kids grow up. He would never attend their graduations, or grumble about college funds, or walk Lila down the aisle if the time came for it, or meet their future families. He would never finally retire and live with Laura peacefully in their farmhouse that he had redesigned by hand.

His kids wouldn’t make any more memories with their father. They would remember him hugging them goodbye before leaving for another mission, with a promise to be back soon. Their next and final memory would be standing at the spot he had picked out in the field, saying goodbye.

Natasha realized all of this, however she said none of it. Saying it would only make it more true and more real. So instead, she kept her mouth shut and let another tear roll down her cheek.

A few moments passed before she felt a gentle hand being placed on her shoulder. It was only then she realized how much she was shaking. Natasha turned on the couch to see Steve’s hand resting on her shoulder. He looked to her with sorrow and worry in his eyes.

Thor came over and handed her a glass of water, which she took with a silent nod. Her hand was shaking too bad to get it up to her lips, so she opted to hold it and allow it to ground her to reality.

“Natasha?” It was Bruce, from the other side of the room. His voice was so quiet and pained that she barely heard it. Still, she perked up her head to listen. “What is it?”

She gave a halfhearted shrug, ignoring the pain in her abdomen. Her hands clenched around the glass so hard she was afraid it might break into shards. “Everything,” she whispered honestly. There was no point in hiding it. They were all feeling the same way and yet here they were, listening and supporting her. Natasha shifted the glass to one hand so she could wipe her eyes with the other.

“He just…” she started and shook her head. “Clint won’t get to see them grow up. I wanted to at least give him that. They’re two of the only six things he’s proud of in this world.”

Nobody noted her use of present tense instead of past. Silence settled back over the team as they all realized what she had. Steve’s light hand on her shoulder was a constant reminder that she wasn’t alone.

And it still wasn’t over. “I have to call Laura,” Natasha said quietly, sniffling slightly and trying to get her voice back to normal. “She needs to know what happened and…what to expect.”

“Not right now. It can wait a few hours, Natasha,” Tony replied, looking at her worriedly.

Natasha shook her head again. “It’s already waited days. I have to tell her.”

“Are you sure that one of us can’t call on your behalf?” Thor suggested, which prompted another head shake from Natasha, who placed the water glass down on the table. She stood up from the couch, letting Steve’s hand fall away as she cursed herself for moving too quickly.

“It has to be me. I owe it to Clint and Laura.” Nobody else fought her on her stance. Tony held out the crutches to her, which she took with a small nod of appreciation. After taking a moment to let the world stop spinning, she hobbled over to the elevator, waited for it to open, and pressed the button to her floor.

Natasha then watched as the doors closed. The rest of the team was still in the other room, silent and unmoving, their gazes fixed on the floor. It hurt her, in the very depths of herself, to see them all so broken.

As much as she wanted to get better, finish this awful chapter of her life, and then go down to the training room and not converse with anyone again, she knew that Clint was right. There were cracks that he had left in her walls. The walls themselves could never come down, not completely, and she knew that.

But Natasha also knew that building her walls up higher and stronger than ever before would do her, and everyone else, no good.

Clint was right. She could not afford to lose everyone else that had cared about him too. They all needed each other.

The elevator doors opened and Natasha immediately breathed a sigh of relief. It had been weeks since she had last been on her floor. At times, she imagined that she would never see it again. She moved carefully with the crutches, trying to not aggravate her injuries further, and grabbed her phone from her pocket.

Natasha made her way into her bedroom, already annoyed at how she had to avoid door frames and furniture with the crutches. Eventually, she was able to sit down on her bed and lean the crutches up against the wall.

She fumbled with the phone in her hands, turning it over and over again, watching the light reflect off its shiny surface. Waiting to call Laura would not make Clint reappear.

Once she was sure her voice sounded normal enough, Natasha dialed Laura’s secure mobile number that Clint had set up to make sure that calls weren’t traced. She brought the phone up to her ear and pursed her lips when Laura picked up.

“Hello?” came her voice on the other end of the line. She knew that only about five people had her number, but she always wanted to be sure.

“Hey, Laura,” Natasha replied in a small voice.

She could practically see the other woman’s smile as she responded. “Nat! So good to hear from you! Where have you guys been?”

“Mission in the Philippines,” she said.

Natasha could hear Laura intake a breath on the other line. “Where the tsunami was?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah.” Natasha’s voice broke at the affirmation.

“Is Clint alright?” was Laura’s next question. “He hasn’t called. I was hoping you guys hadn’t gotten caught…”

Laura knew that something was up. There was no other reason that Natasha was calling instead of Clint. She could hear the tight worry in Laura’s tone, and knew that it would only get worse the longer they spent talking.

“That’s actually what I’m calling about,” she whispered. Natasha took a deep breath in and out, allowing herself to practically deflate on her bed.

For the next half hour, she told Laura everything that had happened. She said ‘I’m sorry’ a dozen or so times, but it couldn’t make up for what had happened. She explained what she could about the mission and the wave afterwards, and how she never saw Clint again.

For the next half hour, Natasha tried to explain why Laura’s husband would never be coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fudged the timeline a little so Cooper is twelve and Lila is eight (no idea how old they actually were in Age of Ultron) and baby Nate doesn't exist, I'm not so mean as to have him grow up without a father. Thanks for reading!


	17. One Word Says it All

Tony pushed a hand against his face to get his hair off his forehead. At least, that’s what he told himself. In truth, it was probably more to hide the tears in his eyes, or make himself realize that this was not in fact some dream, and that his now dead friend had a family. His now dead friend had a wife and two young kids.

“I’m going to, ah,” he said quietly, trying to get himself out of his own head. He was going to what? Get a glass of water? Stand on the balcony? Grab a drink? He honestly had no idea. Everyone else looked to Tony as he stood up and walked into the elevator, pressing the button to take him back down to the lab. He needed to focus on something. He needed to get his mind working on something. He needed to do anything but think about Clint and his family and _crap._ He was thinking about them again.

Trying to not think about Clint made him think about Clint even more.

The elevator came to a stop and Tony was out of the doors the second they opened, back to his workbench, where he had been before JARVIS had informed him about the meeting. He stood up over his project and picked it back up, running his hands along it. He was attempting to make a tracking beacon that could be hidden inside a bullet, so that if one of their targets was shot and got away, it would be much simpler to find them.

Did the team need this invention? Probably not. Had they done fine without it? Yes. Was he positive it would work? No.

Was it keeping him busy? Most certainly.

That last question was all he cared about. He picked up the various wires and chips and casings and thought of every possible way to make everything work.

Tony’s attempted self-distraction lasted about ten minutes before curiosity got the better of him.

“JARVIS? Run a trace on the farmhouse Natasha described, I want to see if anything comes up,” he directed, bringing his gaze up to the screen in front of him.

JARVIS responded moments later as an ‘error’ message appeared on the screen. “I am sorry, sir, there are no known locations in the United States that match that description.”

Tony let out a breathy laugh and shook his head. He shouldn’t be surprised, but he was. Clint had managed a family with everything else going on in his life. How he had done it, Tony had no idea. How well he had done it, he also had no idea. Clint was constantly on missions, or spending time in the Tower. How much of it did he actually spend with his kids?

How many memories had his kids actually made with him?

Tony put down the wires in his hand much harder than he needed to so that he could grip the sides of the table to steady himself. It was over, and it was done. Clint was dead, no more memories would be made, and Tony knew that. He just didn’t accept it. All those days Clint spent at the Tower, and not with his family. All that time he could have been with his wife and his kids, he had spent with them, training or talking or preparing.

Maybe…it was because Clint Barton actually had two families, and he was devoted to both.

* * *

_It was two in the morning. Or maybe it was three. Tony actually had no idea. All he knew was that the sun was down, and how long it had been for, he didn’t actually care. The suits ate up a lot of his time, that was obvious. Renovations to the tower ate up even more. Nearly six months after the Chitauri attack, everything was up and operational again._

_He had taken the liberty of making a floor for each of the team members, since one man didn’t need thirty-some odd floors to just him and his girlfriend. However, everyone was too busy to take them up, so the furnished rooms sat collecting dust, unpressed buttons on the elevator._

_What was he doing again? Coffee, right, so he could continue functioning long past when he should be. Tony dragged a sleepy hand over his face and walked out of the elevator into the communal floor of the tower. A large kitchen, dining room, and floor space set up with couches and a television awaited him. He made his way over to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup, not even bothering to let it cool down first. He would regret it in the morning, he knew, but technically it was already the morning, and he didn’t care._

_Tony leaned up against the side of the counter, one arm folded underneath him, one around the handle of the mug. It was silent on the floor, despite the soft whirring of the dishwasher, and he took the time to appreciate the silence._

_That was, until, he heard a cough a few feet away from him._

_Tony immediately spun around, ready to throw his steaming coffee in the person’s face if that course of action was deemed necessary. He stared wide-eyed at the shadow until they walked a step closer and flicked on the lights next to the wall._

_Tony almost dropped his coffee cup, half in annoyance, and half in surprise._

_“You gonna throw that at me?” Clint asked with a sly smirk and leaned up against the wall. The archer was dressed in his mission gear, the bag on his shoulder matching those under his eyes. There was a cut on his left cheek and he was favoring his right side, but other than that he seemed to be in one piece._

_“Still might,” Tony threatened and raised an eyebrow._

_Clint only chuckled, limping over and placing a hand on Tony’s shoulder before making his way into the kitchen._

_“What the hell are you doing here?” the inventor asked. Any sleepiness that may have been encroaching had been washed away._

_“You said open invitation, here I am,” Clint said and spread his arms out._

_Tony shook his head. “I mean, why, at three in the morning, in the communal kitchen scaring the crap out of me? Why not at a normal time or with a text first?” he elaborated and placed his coffee mug on the counter._

_Clint simply shrugged and got himself a glass of water from the fridge before gesturing to the clock on the microwave. “First off, it’s nearly four thirty. Secondly, I’m a spy. Spies don’t release their location ahead of time, it kind of defeats the purpose,” he smirked again. “Last, I was on a mission. Didn’t get back until late, got a little banged up, and I just found out that my safe house is apparently not safe anymore. I figured I could just stop in for the night and be gone before you woke up,” the archer shrugged again. “If it’s not okay or anything, I can be gone in five minutes, I did kind of barge in.”_

_Tony cursed under his breath, not realizing how late it was. Or early. Or whatever. “No, no. Like you said, open invitation. Anytime. I didn’t think four in the morning, but whenever. It’s a team tower,” Tony smirked. “Just next time, a little warning would be nice. Or, you know, not stalking me from the shadows.”_

_“Copy that. Although there probably won’t be a next time,” Clint chuckled and drained his glass of water._

_“You guys are always welcome,” Tony nodded. “If you sneak up on me again, you will be getting coffee in the face, whether or not I know it’s you,” he added and picked up his mug before making his way back over to the elevator._

_“Yeah, yeah. If I don’t scare you to death first,” Clint joked. “Thanks, Tony.”_

_“Feel free to stick around, that’s what this place is for,” Tony reminded. He pressed the button for the lab and raised his mug towards Clint before the doors closed._

_By the time he made it back to the communal level, JARVIS informed him that Clint had left as soon as the sun had risen. Tony did admit that he felt a little disappointed, but shrugged it off._

_The next week, the exact same thing happened. That time, however, Tony’s mug smashed on the floor and Clint stayed for breakfast. Eventually, the visits became more frequent, sometimes occurring at normal human hours instead of the dead of night. Sometimes Clint popped by just to check up or spend a few nights, even though he wasn’t on a mission._

_Clint would sometimes cook dinner or bring along a movie to watch while Tony would make the popcorn. After another few months, Clint was spending two or so weeks per month at the Tower, when he wasn’t on missions or wherever else he went._

_In all honesty, Tony enjoyed the company. He also wasn’t surprised when a month after Clint had unofficially “moved in”, Natasha started stopping by. She was quicker to move in, wanting to be closer to the team, especially since her missions often overlapped with Clint’s._

_Movie nights became more common, as did events of ‘almost throwing coffee at the two master assassin spies that hide in the shadows at ungodly hours’. Those were always fun._

_When Bruce returned from his latest expedition to make the world a better place, the tower became his home as well. Two spies and two inventors sharing the same space, finally everything was balanced out. Tony had someone to talk science with, and Clint had someone to spar with. They all clicked together. Thor appeared next, staying at the tower whenever he wasn’t on Asgard. Drinking games became much more popular, much to Bruce’s dismay._

_Steve was the last one to move in with the rest of the team. He had his own place in D.C., which he used and was fine with. After the whole fiasco with the Winter Soldier, his apartment wasn’t exactly safe, and he accepted the offer from Tony. Any time not spent looking for Bucky was spent with the rest of the team._

_For the first time since the initial New York attack, all six members were together. Even more than that; they were inhabiting the same space. They all trained together and went over different strategies and talked about their days. They joked and laughed and offered silent comfort when a mission hadn’t gone exactly as planned._

_Team missions became more common, as did times spent on various couches together, bantering back and forth about whatever they were talking about. After every night, everyone would retire to their own floors, which were now decorated how each member liked it. There was no dust and the decals on the elevator buttons had started to become worn from use._

_The medical floor started being used (mainly because Steve was always the one to save everyone and Clint was second on that list, both men still refusing to accept the fact that they were actually human). Beyond the blood-stained sheets and Bruce’s careful medical care, they were all always back up on their feet in no time._

_The training floor was restocked with supplies, and Tony kept a full closet of punching bags since Steve had an annoying habit of constantly breaking them. An archery range was set up for Clint, and different targets and mats were put into place for practice and sparring._

_During those few months, they became more than a team. Tony watched as the group of individuals slowly morphed themselves into a makeshift, dysfunctional family that somehow worked. And he was grateful that it did._

_Tony had to admit that having a half-full tower was better than an empty one. And still on some nights, he would find his way up to the communal floor looking for a cup of coffee at three in the morning. And on some of those nights, he would find Clint already up there with two cups brewed. One for the sleepless assassin, and one for the working inventor._

* * *

“Sir, your heart rate is extremely elevated. I would recommend sitting down or a glass of water. Should I send someone up for assistance?”

Just like that, the memory seemed to smash in front of his eyes like a mirror breaking. Tony hadn’t realized how hard he was gripping the table until he tore his hands away to find that the joints hurt. “I’m fine, J,” he replied in a broken tone, blinking to get the shards of the image out of his mind. One remained stuck.

A picture of Clint mid-laugh, a beer bottle held loosely in his fingers, as Steve told an old war story about the Commandos during one of their movie nights. His family wouldn’t make any more memories, and neither would the Avengers, at least with their full team.

Tony was still in the middle of his breakdown when the elevator doors opened and Bruce stepped out, obviously worried. “JARVIS alerted me,” he said in a quiet tone as he walked over, his shoes echoing on the smooth floors of the lab. “What’s going on?”

Tony had taken a seat in the chair in front of his table and pressed his elbows onto the cool surface. “Headache,” he replied simply.

He could hear Bruce’s footsteps slowly disappear and then reappear as he went into the lab’s small bathroom. Bruce came back out a minute later with a glass of water and two advils, both of which he passed to Tony before sitting down next to him.

Bruce knew, probably better than anyone, that Tony’s one word answer was a cover for a thousand words he couldn’t bear to say out loud. Because saying one word and brushing it off was so much simpler than saying absolutely everything on his mind. He was fine, and he would convince himself of that until the lie became the truth.

Tony popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed the glass of water, bringing it to rest gently on the table, listening to the silence that filled the lab. Bruce’s presence next to him was reassuring, and although he would never admit it, he knew that Bruce understood.

He leaned back in the chair slightly and listened to it creak beneath his weight. “This sucks,” Tony said quietly after the silence became too much for him.

Bruce nodded in reply. He didn’t need to say anything and Tony hadn’t expected a reply. Because they both knew he wasn’t just talking about that one word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So even though Clint is gone, he's still present in a way with the flashbacks. I really loved writing them initially, so I hope you guys enjoy reading them :) pretty sizable one coming up next chapter. Thanks for reading!


	18. Bullet Wounds and Farmhouses

Two more days passed before the situation progressed further. Natasha told everyone that Laura wanted a day to tell the kids what had happened, and that she didn’t want to shock them too much by having the funeral the same day. Everyone nodded, of course understanding, and went about their days.

Steve was finally able to get the bandages removed from around his legs, given that almost a week had passed and the worst of the gashes had recovered. They still stung when he moved and the skin was tight, but he wasn’t about to admit that. Instead, he powered through and walked back to the communal floor slowly, after thanking Bruce for taking care of him. He still wore a brace for his knee, but the serum had taken care of most of the damage and he had put his crutches back into his closet.

He found Natasha where she had been the past few days: seated on one of the couches with her broken ankle propped up. She absolutely hated not being able to move around as usual, but with no missions coming in, she knew it was for the best. Normally she would have been training, but she figured that if she pushed herself too hard with the cast still on, it would only do further damage. If Clint were still there, he would scold her for it. So she stayed put and smiled slightly when she saw Steve walk in.

“How’d it go?” Nat asked quietly, only recently starting to talk a little more.

“Good. They’re, ah, all healed up, which is nice,” Steve nodded and came around the couch to sit gingerly next to Natasha, who had her leg propped up on the coffee table.

She watched his movements curiously, noting the winces of pain when he twisted his legs or moved his injured knee. “I am jealous of your healing ability. How’s the knee?”

Steve shook his head, knowing he should have expected her not to let up. “Hurts, obviously. But I won’t complain.”

Steve never did. None of them did. Getting hurt came with the job. Losing a teammate was a different kind of hurt altogether. “How’s the ankle?” he asked, gesturing to her limb.

“Hurts, but it’s a broken ankle, it’s not supposed to feel peachy,” Natasha replied. In truth, the stitches in her abdomen hurt much more and her back was sore from laying in the same position all day as to not aggravate them. But she didn’t mention it because she knew what the other outcome could have been.

The light had gradually begun to return to her eyes, but they were still shrouded with the darkness of loss. She let the silence sit between them for a few moments before picking up the remote and tossing it onto Steve’s lap. “Find a movie or something on Stark’s million channels,” she said with a nod.

Steve’s reply was a smirk as he picked up the device, turned on the television, and began flipping channels. Anything it took to get their minds off the topic they weren’t talking about, they would do.

Gradually, the rest of the team joined them. With the dread of the next day’s trip to the farm, no one could sleep. Instead of spreading out all over the living room as they so often did, everyone seemed to cram together. Tony sat on the couch with Steve and Natasha, while Bruce scooted a chair closer and Thor opted for a few pillows on the floor. They didn’t make popcorn, seeing as it wasn’t a typical movie night. It was a distraction, and they all knew it. Still, they chuckled at the cheesy jokes in the comical movie and allowed themselves to smile for the first time in days.

No one fell asleep. They all stayed up together, watching lighthearted movies, trying to imagine that Clint was in the chair across the room, watching them from the shadows.

The night was a distraction. When the day came, so did the realization of what it would bring.

* * *

_“How are you feeling?”_

_“If you ask me that one more time, I’ll give you a demonstration as to how I’m feeling.”_

_Natasha’s threat was empty, brought on by the intense pain in her thigh. And head. And pretty much everywhere. She was sitting on one of the cots inside the Quinjet, her leg elevated and a rag pressed to it to stop the bleeding. Clint had been able to remove the bullet, but the bleeding had refused to stop._

_The rest of the mission had been successful, except for the fact that Natasha had taken a round to her thigh and Clint had been forced to pull her into the Quinjet for safety. It was only their second year of working together, and while the trust was there, it wasn’t complete. They were two master assassins, it wasn’t common to trust wholeheartedly when they knew what the other was capable of._

_“Just trying to gauge how you are,” Clint said from the cockpit, punching in a final coordinate before walking back. He visibly paled slightly at how red the rag was against her torn uniform._

_Hospitals were too risky and the SHIELD base was too far away for Natasha to make it, but neither of them wanted to admit that._

_Natasha caught his glance and rolled her eyes. Although blood loss was making it difficult to concentrate, she was still awake. “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve been through worse. How long until we’re back to base?”_

_Clint was quiet for a moment as he grabbed a different towel and gently switched them out. “Not going back to base,” he muttered and looked at her. “It’s too far away.”_

_Natasha looked at him, confused. “Then where the hell are you taking me?” she questioned._

_He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, which was coated with sweat and ash from the mission. He had gotten away relatively unscathed, aside from a gash on his right arm. “A safe house,” Clint replied simply. As the words came out, there was obvious worry in them._

_“Okay, a safe house is good. What’s with the worry?” she asked from her place on the cot._

_Clint pursed his lips together and looked at her. “It’s not a normal safe house. Nobody even knows it exists,” he began to explain. “And by nobody, I mean nobody besides Fury and me.”_

_Natasha shrugged as much as she could without jostling the towel. “Super secret safe house, don’t tell anyone, I got it, Clint. No need to get your panties in a bunch.”_

_“Natasha.” The word came out serious and almost threatening. “Nobody can know, ever. Not under death threats, or jokes, or blackmail, or torture. Nobody, do you understand? This is an absolute last resort because you will die if we don’t stop.”_

_There, he had finally said what had been floating through the air for the hours since the mission. There was no place left to hide from the ugly truth._

_“I’m not going anywhere,” she said quietly._

_“I know that,” Clint replied and shook his head. His eyes seemed to be searching her soul, as if he was still trying to decide if this was a good idea or not. But she was his partner, and he cared about her, and she couldn’t die on his watch. Especially not when she had saved his sorry ass by taking the bullet meant for him._

_Clint doubted if she even knew she had done it. He had seen the man peeking from behind the building, but hadn’t pulled an arrow fast enough. Before he knew it, the man’s gun and Natasha’s had gone off. The man slumped to the floor as she stood in front of her partner, her face pale with realization that she had been the recipient of his bullet._

_“Natasha, I’m being deadly serious about this,” he said, continuing to look at her. “If you tell anyone, or I suspect you will tell anyone, both you and they will be dead before anything else can be done about it. Am I clear?”_

_Natasha nodded slowly. It was so seldom that Clint was serious about something. It made her wonder even more what was inside the safe house. “I swear. Not a word,” she nodded again._

_Clint took one more glance at her and nodded back, set in his decision._

_Ten minutes later, the Quinjet landed in what appeared to be a clearing in the middle of some trees in the middle of nowhere. Against Natasha’s wishes, Clint hoisted her up and carried her bridal style out of the jet so she could keep pressure on her injured leg._

_It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay conscious, and one moment they were in the forest, the next Clint was carrying her up the steps to what appeared to be a farmhouse._

_The door opened before Clint got there and a woman rushed out. She was in her late twenties, with short brown hair, a small stature, and a worried look in her eyes. “This her?” she asked quietly as Clint carried Natasha inside._

_“Yep,” came Clint’s short reply. Carrying dead weight for more than five minutes was not an easy task. He lay Natasha down as gingerly as he could on the couch in the front of the house._

_Natasha registered that medical supplies and towels were already out, meaning that Clint had contacted the woman prior to them arriving to let her know they would be stopping by. “Where are we?” Natasha asked, watching the woman come up to sit down next to her._

_“Safe house,” she answered as Clint went to wash his hands in the kitchen. “You’re gonna be just fine,” the woman assured with a tight smile._

_“Who are you?” was Natasha’s next question._

_The woman opened her mouth to answer, but Clint did it for her. “A friend,” he said simply. “You got a stitching kit over there?”_

_The woman rummaged around and pulled one out. “Looks like you both need it,” she said, motioning to Clint’s arm and Natasha’s leg._

_“Later,” Clint shook his head and walked over to the couch, gingerly placing a pillow behind Natasha’s head as he did so. “The bullet may have nicked an artery, but I couldn’t tell when I got it out,” he informed._

_The woman nodded and took a look at the towel, which Natasha’s shaking hand was still holding in place. “Mind if I?” she asked, to which Natasha shook her head. She raised up the towel, causing a fresh wave of blood to come from the wound. The woman cursed and placed the towel back before looking at Clint. “She needs a hospital, Clint,” she whispered._

_Clint shook his head adamantly. “No. They’d recognize her. The SHIELD base is too far away. This was the only place.”_

_She took one more look over Natasha and sighed before opening the stitching kit. “Let’s just hope the two of us are decent enough doctors then,” she muttered._

_“You’re going to be fine, Nat,” Clint added and looked over to his partner, giving her a soft squeeze on the shoulder._

_Natasha rolled her eyes again before closing them. “Stop being so sappy, Barton,” she slurred._

_Somewhere between what she counted as being the eighth and ninth stitches, Natasha lost her battle with consciousness._

* * *

_“I at least appreciated the warning.”_

_“I’m sorry, Laura, this was never meant to happen. The guy came out of nowhere, she stepped in front of me. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her.”_

_“Are you sure you can trust her? And I mean absolutely positive.”_

_“I wouldn’t have brought her if I had any doubts.”_

_“I believe you. I just don’t want this to become a normal occurrence.”_

_“It won’t, I promise.”_

_Natasha heard the second half of the conversation through waves of half consciousness. She felt somewhat bad for eavesdropping, but they should have picked somewhere better than the kitchen to talk about her. Natasha shifted slightly on the couch and opened her eyes._

_Footsteps immediately went in her direction and as soon as her eyes had focused, Clint was by her side, relief in his eyes. His arm had a white bandage over it, so she guessed she must have been out a while._

_“Hey,” he said softly and smiled at her._

_“Hey yourself,” Natasha smirked and tried to prop herself up. Clint helped her get into a sitting position while the woman, Laura, brought over a cup of water with a straw._

_She handed it to Natasha, who took it gratefully. “How are you feeling?”_

_Natasha took a few sips before shrugging. “Alright. Thank you, for all of this. I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”_

_Laura immediately shook her head and smiled. “You should see him when he needs to get stitched up,” she pointed to Clint. “He’s not a very good patient.”_

_“Hey!” Clint commented._

_“He did run out of a hospital with a concussion and only a gown on,” Natasha smirked and looked at him._

_“I was pretty out of it, you can’t hold that against me!” Clint countered and sat down in a chair next to the couch._

_Natasha shook her head. “Too late.”_

_Laura began chuckling as she held up a hand in-between the two assassins. “Alright, alright. No banter until you’re more healed and awake. From what I could tell, the bullet missed the artery, but you definitely need to stay down a few days.”_

_“No, I can’t put you out of your way like that,” Natasha began to protest, but Laura was faster._

_“It’s no problem. You need time to heal, and this is a safe place,” she assured._

_Clint piped up next. “And I already talked to Fury. Mission went fine, we’ve got two weeks off. Use it to get recuperated and familiar with the place,” he nodded._

_Natasha finally realized that going up against both of them would do no good, so she smiled slightly. “Thank you then.”_

_Laura nodded and took the water glass that Natasha held out, placing it on the table. “I’ll give you two a few minutes,” she said quietly and left the room, heading up the stairs to the second story._

_Clint and Natasha were silent for a few moments before Natasha asked, “Is she a nurse? An agent? A hospitable woman who gives up her home to injured assassins?”_

_Clint chuckled and leaned back against the chair. “The first and last most of the time,” he explained. Natasha caught the gleam in his eyes when he talked about her even the littlest bit. The look was complete and utter adoration and happiness, one that she had never seen from him before._

_“You and her, you’re pretty close?”_

_Clint nodded again._

_“Girlfriend, boyfriend? Close agent-nurse relationship?” Natasha asked. She didn’t mean to pry, but she couldn’t help but be curious._

_“I was serious about killing you on the Quinjet, you know,” Clint brought up again, to which Natasha nodded. He then continued, “neither. Wife,” he said simply._

_Natasha, in her half delirious state, had to try to not let her mouth hang open. Her partner, the lone archer, the sarcastic spy, had a wife? He was married? She was recuperating in his secret house?_

_“The look on your face right now is priceless,” Clint chuckled, looking at her._

_“I just…didn’t expect it. I mean, it’s wonderful to hear, don’t get me wrong,” she covered quickly._

_“Yeah, people don’t suspect it. Fury set it up when I joined, totally off the radar in every way possible. Four people know about it,” he pointed to her, “including you.”_

_Natasha let the reality of his decision wash over her. He had trusted her with the biggest secret in his entire life, which was practically built on them._

_“Why tell me this at all?” she asked quietly after a moment of silence had passed._

_Clint shrugged slightly and leaned in closer. “You’re only here because you took the bullet for me. Two years we’ve had each other’s backs, Natasha. Two years with more shit than anyone can imagine, and I can’t picture it ending anytime soon. I trust you, wholeheartedly.”_

_Natasha knew when someone was lying. It was a major part of being a spy. Every single word in Clint’s explanation was the complete truth._

_“Besides,” he continued, “should something ever happen to me, having someone else break the news besides Fury would be nice.” Clint added the next part with a small smirk._

_“Nothing will happen to you, I’ll make sure of that,” Natasha nodded. “Your trust won’t be misplaced.”_

_“I know it won’t.” Clint flashed her another smile before standing up from the chair and moving into the kitchen._

_“Thank you,” Natasha said quietly. For so many things those two words couldn’t quite encompass, Clint seemed to understand._

_She heard a few drawers open and close and a few plates start to rattle. “Of course, Natasha.”_

_Those next two weeks with the Bartons turned out to be some of the best in her life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked the flashback here! It will be completed in the epilogue of the story. Thanks for reading!


	19. Kiss the Kids Goodnight for Me

The ride to the farm was absolutely silent, except for the hum of the Quinjet’s engines. Tony had put in the coordinates Natasha had provided, then vacated the cockpit, leaving the jet on autopilot. Piloting had always been Clint’s job. Sitting in that chair, watching the scenery go by like Clint had so many times was too hard. Tony, of course, would never admit that, but everyone else knew and didn’t comment.

Clint himself was in the storage area of the craft, slowly being defrosted in the cryo chamber. There was a wooden coffin next to his frozen one, which Tony and Thor had placed in the jet. Natasha hadn’t looked as they had loaded up Clint’s body in preparation for one final journey. She had hobbled into the Quinjet with her crutches and sat on the edge of one of the cots, utterly silent.

There was no talking or banter or mission details like there always was when they were in the jet. Steve sat on the bed across from hers, his injured knee spread out flat on the cot’s surface. Tony was tinkering with something, as he always did when there was nothing to talk about. Thor had paced back and forth for a while, before realizing it wasn’t helping anything, and he too had sat down in defeat. Bruce was sitting next to one of the medical tables, staring off into space.

Nobody slept, nobody talked, nobody seldom moved more than a muscle. It was all in anticipation and terror at what was to come. They knew that the second the Quinjet’s wheels touched down, everything would change.

* * *

They left Clint inside the Quinjet for the time being. They had arrived at the farm in mid-afternoon. The burial itself would take place in the morning of the following day, which everyone had pushed to the back of their minds. Tony powered it off, Thor helped Natasha up, and Bruce gave Steve a hand so that he could regain his balance. They were all leaning on each other, whether or not they realized it.

Tony had parked the Quinjet so that it was completely hidden by the trees. Of course, he had flown over and around the property many times after putting the jet into stealth mode to make sure there was nobody following them.

Natasha eased herself down the ramp beside Steve, while everyone else followed a bit ahead. As soon as all boots were on the ground, the team let Natasha take the lead. It was a short two minute walk to the farmhouse, and just the mere sight of it made her heart swell with sadness.

And of course Hawkeye’s kids had super hearing just like their dad, for the second she stepped foot on the stairs leading up to the door, the screen flew open, revealing the two children.

“Auntie Nat!” they both called, rushing down the stairs and colliding with Natasha so fast she was afraid she would fall over. Her abdomen screamed out in pain, but in the moment she didn’t care. She wrapped Cooper and Lila in the best hug she could give on crutches and tried to smile at them. When they pulled away, both kids had tears in their eyes, but said nothing. Soon their gaze swept to the superheroes behind her and Cooper raised a hand in a halfhearted wave.

“This is Cooper, and Lila,” Natasha introduced, pointing to them. “And that’s Tony, Bruce, Steve, and Thor,” she pointed to each of the Avengers as she said their names.

“Hi,” Lila said sheepishly, standing close to Natasha.

Natasha, who couldn’t bear to look her teammates in the eyes. Natasha, who turned towards the house at the first chance she got so she wouldn’t see the tears shining in their eyes and they wouldn’t see the wetness in hers.

“Where’s your mom?” Natasha asked, noticing how Laura wasn’t outside with the kids.

“Inside baking,” Cooper replied simply, casting a glance towards the four men in the front yard before heading up the small porch steps and holding the door open. He didn’t need to say more about his mom for Natasha to understand.

Laura had always been a stress baker. Whether or not her kids realized it, Natasha had no idea. She only knew that a few times she had helped Laura with her baking when they were both waiting for Clint to come home. It was therapeutic in a way, giving them both something else to think about.

They all filed into the house rather quietly, Lila not taking her gaze off Thor for a moment. The demigod towered over all four feet of the little girl, and she seemed in complete awe of his presence.

Once inside, Natasha noticed the smell of cookies coming from the kitchen. “Laura?” she called. Everyone else stayed behind her, crowding the small hallway.

There was a clang as something was set down and footsteps were heard before Laura was in front of them. She was obviously somewhat frazzled as she wiped flour off her shirt and looked around the group. “Nice to meet you all,” she said quietly. “I just wish it were under…better circumstances.”

Natasha could practically hear everyone’s gazes dropping to the floor at the statement. Silence once again settled over the group, until she broke it. “Why don’t you guys get acquainted with the kids?” she suggested quietly, nodding towards the family room, which was connected to the kitchen.

“You guys will be okay?” Steve asked, the first sentence he had said all day.

Laura nodded back in response. “There’s some, um, cookies and banana bread in the kitchen, help yourselves if you want. Cooper, Lila, show them where the plates are,” Laura directed, ruffling Cooper’s hair as he passed by.

One by one, they filed into the kitchen, leaving Natasha and Laura standing awkwardly in the hallway.

“We should go out back,” Laura suggested quietly, looking to Natasha before heading down the hall, where Natasha followed. Laura held open the screen door to the back porch to let Nat out before closing both it and the actual door. Natasha leaned her crutches up against the wall of the house with a sigh.

Once that was done, Laura came to her and wrapped her in a soft hug. Natasha immediately reciprocated, realizing how much she had needed the physical contact. When they pulled away after a few moments, both women had tears running down their cheeks, and neither made a move to wipe them away.

“It’s good to see you, Nat,” Laura smiled sadly at her friend.

“You too, Laura,” she nodded back. “I’m so sorry, about all of this.”

Laura immediately shook her head. “You’re not to blame. You know as well as I do that Clint would absolutely hate that.”

“I know,” Natasha replied quietly. She knew how much Clint hated it, and yet she couldn’t stop feeling guilty. It came with the job, or so she supposed. “How are the kids handling it?”

Laura took a deep breath and sighed before responding. “About as well as you’d expect. Cooper’s trying to be strong through it all, I can tell. I think Lila gets the gist of what it means, but hasn’t fully come to terms with it. None of us have.”

Natasha nodded slowly. “It will take some time. For all of us,” she added.

“What…happened?” Laura asked slowly, letting out a shaky breath as she did.

“Steve probably knows better than I do, actually,” Natasha admitted with a start. “The mission went fine, until the power went out. We went to go check it out, and were on the bottom level of where we were staying when the tsunami hit. We all…got separated. I lost consciousness pretty quickly.”

Laura moved her hand to grasp Natasha’s in a soft gesture as they both sat down on the lounge overlooking the back yard.

“I had a pipe through my abdomen and a broken ankle, but I got found by emergency services and taken to a hospital, where Tony found me. I didn’t know what had happened to Clint until I was back at the jet.” Natasha pursed her lips and looked down at her knees as another tear dripped onto her jeans, making a dark spot there. “From what Steve’s said, he found Clint and they tried to make it out, but Steve pushed himself to hard and passed out. When Thor finally found both of them, Clint forced him to take Steve first. He’s been beating himself up about it ever since.”

She couldn’t bear to tell the wife of a dead man how badly he had been injured, or that he had written her a goodbye note, or that she hadn’t even been with him when he passed. She couldn’t tell Laura that.

Natasha finally looked over to Laura, who nodded slowly as tears continued to drip down her cheeks. “His job was to protect his teammates. There was no other way it would have happened,” Laura said, knowing exactly what would have happened should a situation like that ever arise. She had just prayed that it would never come.

_“Simple, five day recon and take out the target. I’ve got Nat and Steve with me, we’ll be home before the week is out, promise.”_

That had been the last thing Clint had said to her, face to face, before he left for the mission. He had called her while en route to let her know where he was headed and not to worry. She never realized how much she cherished the sound of his voice until she realized she wouldn’t hear it anymore.

There was one voicemail saved on her phone from after they had completed the mission, probably only hours before the disaster struck. _“Love you, kiss the kids goodnight for me,”_ were the last words she would ever hear from her husband.

“Laura?” Natasha’s voice was hesitant as she looked at the other woman, whose gaze was far away. “I’m so sorry.” Those three words spoke in the volumes that Natasha could neither think nor speak about.

And Laura understood every single unspoken word. “So am I,” she replied just as quietly, before wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Where is he now?”

“In the jet in the storage hold. He’s in a cryo freeze right now, but after…everything, he’ll be moved to the coffin.” Natasha absolutely hated those two sentences. She had never hated a grouping of words more in her entire life. She was talking as if Clint were some sort of…object rather than her partner and best friend and a whole list of other things. Just saying the word ‘coffin’ made her tense up inside. “It’s parked where it always is, take as long as you need.”

Natasha pressed her key card to the Quinjet into Laura’s hand. Laura knew how to unlock the jet and lock it back up again, that was no problem. The problem was what she was going to do when she made her way into the storage hold. She stared at the card, which shook as her hand trembled. “I have some…clothes upstairs I should bring,” she said quietly.

“Whatever you need to do,” Natasha reassured. Laura looked to her friend, and dried the rest of her tears before standing up and heading inside.

Natasha followed suit a few minutes later, and was greeted to a chorus of chatter, something she had not expected to hear. Bruce, Tony, Thor, and Steve were seated throughout the living room with Lila and Cooper on the floor, looking at all of them.

“- there was egg on the ceiling for three days before they noticed, and we didn’t say a thing!” That sentence elicited laughter. Laughter, something Natasha never thought she would hear again.

“Dad always did leave the cooking to mom,” Cooper replied. Although there was pain obvious in the way he looked at everyone, there was a smile stretched across his features.

“Are we talking about the time Clint tried making breakfast?” Natasha chimed in, walking in on her crutches before settling onto the couch as gingerly as she could. Everyone was silent for a moment, somewhat surprised at how she had reacted.

“That was another cooking disaster. The story Tony was recalling was when he and Clint attempted to make hard boiled eggs,” Thor informed with a smirk.

“Daddy made breakfast?” Lila asked, hopping up from the floor to sit on the couch next to Natasha. The little girl looked up to the woman with big, expectant eyes. The same eyes that had so often looked to her from her father.

“Oh, he attempted to.” Natasha wrapped an arm around her before starting the tale of how cereal, eggs, and bacon had defeated the great Hawkeye. She was surprised to find herself laughing halfway through, joined by everyone else. When Laura returned an hour later, she joined in on the stories.

In the midst of one of the greatest tragedies the group had ever known, they were able to come together and smile from it. They had staved off the darkness for a little while longer, and that was what mattered.

By the time it was dark, everyone was exhausted. Laura sent the kids up to bed and everyone enlisted their help in cleaning up the kitchen. Impromptu beds were made, Natasha took the guest room as to not aggravate her injuries further, and the house was dark and silent.

There wasn’t a sound in the house besides the soft wind through the trees outside. Those sounds usually had Natasha out like a light, but with the dread of the next day looming over her head, she found it hard to get more than an hour of sleep.


	20. Three Times Too Many

This isn’t the first time she’s had to bury Clint. No one else knows this, of course, and no one else will, since this will be the last time. She thought the first time was it, and then the second, but it ends up being the third. The third time’s always a charm. Natasha wants to punch that phrase in its teeth. Some charm this is.

The first time she buried Clint, she thought it had been the end. There was nothing left after the explosion but bones, which Fury had said belonged to Clint. Natasha, being too distracted by his “death”, had not looked into it like she usually would have. She and Fury buried what was left of “his body” themselves in a small, discrete place underneath a tree, and covered it up. They moved on, or she at least tried to, but never quite got there.

That had been just over a year and a half since they first met.

Which was why, four months later when Clint appeared, Fury had a black eye for a week. The bruise on Natasha’s hand lasted three days. Apparently Clint needed to “die” so that the enemies wouldn’t know to look when he infiltrated their ranks. His overall mission was a success, even though it meant he had almost lost Natasha in the process. After she was finished being pissed off at him, which took a solid month, and made him swear to never pull anything like that again, she made a promise to herself to never let the real thing happen.

A year later, the second time occurred. This time, however, it was more public. They held a small funeral service with about ten people attending. It was a closed casket, so no one could see that it was actually empty. The story was that one of SHIELD’s assassins had been killed on a mission, but the organization responsible for the murder was still out there. One of the agents from the said organization was present at the “funeral” to make sure the job was done right. Natasha smirked to herself when she imagined the beat down he must have gotten when two years later, Hawkeye was front and center fighting with the Avengers to take down aliens.

Sure, Clint had been shot in an assassination attempt, but it hadn’t worked. Natasha was pleased that she was allowed to know the truth with Fury about that attempt. The truth being that Clint was at home on the farm, helping Laura take care of newborn baby Lila.

Fast forward another few years, and the same scenario was playing out. Fury was by her side, having flown in the night before. This time, however, instead of the two of them knowing the truth, everyone else around them does. Steve and Thor and Bruce and Tony and Lila and Cooper and Laura. Everything was so much simpler when it was fake and they were the only ones that knew.

Everything was so much simpler when she had to fake the tears on her face and not look at anyone else.

This…this was nothing simple.

Because this time, instead of an empty coffin or fake bones, the coffin was occupied. And the body was completely and wholly Clint’s. Carried by Thor to his resting place, seen by the whole team, dressed by his loving wife. Clint.

* * *

At the break of dawn, nearly before the sun was up, Steve, Thor, Bruce, and Tony were all out at the Quinjet. Natasha had described the spot where Clint had wanted to be buried. She would have been out there digging the hole with them had it not been for her injuries, or for the fact that she was burying the possibly single most important person ever in her life. Instead, she stayed at the house and helped Laura with breakfast. She kept them all busy, thinking about something else than what was to come.

An hour after the sun rose, Fury drove up, having come after being contacted while the team was still at the tower. He was met with rare hugs or claps on the shoulder from everyone and offered sincere condolences, which he meant.

Three hours later, the men were back. Thor relayed quietly to Natasha and Laura that Clint was buried.

Thirty minutes after that, they all took a short trek to Clint’s final resting spot. Laura had made the executive decision to not let her kids see the coffin being lowered into the cold, dark hole, and it was a choice that everyone respected. The walk itself only took five minutes, and soon everyone was standing over the freshly moved dirt and underneath the trees.

The spot was tranquil. A small stream weaved its way through the property fifty feet away, where Clint would sometimes fish in his time off. They were surrounded by trees, despite not being too far into the midwestern forest. The trees were just starting to turn orange as a sign of the coming fall. Green and orange and brown speckled the area around them, and a few leaves crunched under their feet as they walked.

Clint was buried at the base of one of the trees. Not the biggest and not the smallest; just another one of the trees among the other thousands. But it meant something to Clint and Laura, something that would stay just between the two of them.

There was no grave marker, they had decided to leave that up to Laura and the kids if they wanted anything to mark the precise spot.

Everyone stopped a few steps from the mound itself and formed a loose semi-circle around it. Laura had an arm around each of her children and was obviously trying to hold it together for their sake. Cooper’s lip quivered and Lila’s shoulders shook as tears ran down her face.

Natasha wanted nothing more than to run to her and hug her, to tell her that everything would be alright, to promise that her daddy died helping people. But she didn’t do anything. Because she too was rooted to her spot on the ground, her only anchor to reality being Fury’s hand on her shoulder.

They were all silent, looking at the trees to avoid looking at the ground or each other, waiting for what to do next.

“I guess I’ll start then,” came Bruce’s quiet voice as he looked around at the group, as if for approval. “If that’s alright with everyone, of course.” He was met with a chorus of slow nods as all eyes turned to him. Bruce’s own looked to the ground at his feet, where only hours ago he had buried his comrade.

“No apologies. Clint hates that stuff,” Natasha said quietly, nodding to Bruce before allowing him to continue.

“Alright,” he replied, nodding slowly. “He’s a good man. He helped me a lot, even when he may not have realized it, and I will always be thankful for the time I got with him.” It wasn’t overly sorrowful or wordy, much like everything else Bruce said. They all knew the truth and sentiment behind the words so no, nothing else was needed.

“You are a great warrior and an even greater friend, Clint. People all around the globe know what you did and how you kept them safe, and we are all better for it. I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to fight alongside you, even if it was for a short time.” Thor’s wasn’t overly grandiose like the man himself. Natasha found herself wondering how many funerals the demigod had actually attended, and quickly wiped the thought from her mind.

How many funerals had they all attended?

“I hope heaven is filled with billionaires that you can scare at three in the morning, Clint. You know I hated it, and the look on your face was always priceless, as I’m sure mine must have been,” Tony started, sighing before he continued. “They’d better treat ya well up there, you deserve it.” Tony had never been one for long-winded conversations about feelings. That hadn’t changed while standing over Clint’s grave. Still, the sorrow in Tony’s eyes was a look Natasha prayed that she would never see again.

Steve took a moment to collect his thoughts before shaking his head and beginning. “He’s a good man, a good agent, a good friend, and a fantastic father. His wit is unmatched, though his jokes could sometimes use some work,” he smirked a bit at that, “and an always outstanding marksman. He’s one of the most dependable people I’ve had the honor of working alongside. I just…wish I could have repaid him.” Steve’s voice dropped off at the end as he took half a step backwards.

“We’ll miss him,” was all Laura got out, rubbing circles along the backs of her children, who were silent. She had gotten out what she needed while on the Quinjet with her husband, and was not keen on having a second major breakdown in front of everyone, mostly her kids, even though it was most definitely warranted.

“One of the best agents I’ve ever trained,” Fury stated with a nod. “And one of the best men I’ve ever known. The world is better for the work and the care he put into it. My deepest condolences for your loss,” he added quietly. Although he spoke mainly to Laura, Lila, and Cooper, his gaze eventually swept over everyone standing near him, until it landed on Natasha.

She cleared her throat a bit, positive that she was white as a sheet, and looked down at the mound. No empty coffin, no fake bones, all reality.

“He means a lot to all of us, in his own ways,” Natasha started, using the present tense, like everyone else had. Maybe it was a way of showing that he was still with them, maybe it was some twisted way of dealing with grief, maybe nobody wanted to accept the fact that he was dead.

“Whether he’s a father or a husband or an agent or a spy or a soldier or a friend or a comrade or a jokester, he’s still Clint Barton. There’s no one else like him, and there probably never will be. But I am thankful that I was on the earth at the same time as him and got to know him. I am proud to call him one of my closest friends.”

She ended with a nod, blinking to get the tears out of her eyes. Everyone else did the same; shaking their heads or wiping their eyes or trying to calm their breathing. Another few minutes passed before Lila crouched down next to the grave.

Gently, as if she were afraid it would break, she placed a rose from the garden on top of the grave. “Love you, daddy,” she whispered before standing up and going back to Laura, placing her hand in her mom’s.

* * *

By the time they made it back to the house, it was mid-afternoon and everyone was exhausted. Cooper took Lila out to the backyard to distract her and give the adults time to talk. They all seated themselves throughout the dining room area, not saying anything at first.

“How are they holding up?” Thor was the one to break the silence, casting his gaze towards Laura, who was leaning up against the counter with a glass of water.

It took her a moment to hear him, but she eventually looked at him and sighed. “Hopefully they’ll be alright. They’re strong kids,” Laura nodded. “Just…no child should have to go through this.”

“They shouldn’t,” Tony agreed, shaking his head. “But hey, they are his,” he smirked, getting up to walk over to her. “It’ll take time, but they’ll be okay, Laura.”

“And if you need anything, ever, we’re always around,” Bruce assured from his place on the couch.

Steve, Natasha, and Fury all nodded in agreement as Laura looked at the scene in front of her. Her eyes swept over each member of the team, grieving in their own ways. She eventually landed on the fridge, where a picture of Clint and the kids at a carnival was stuck up with a blue magnet.

Laura set the water glass down as tears began to reform in her eyes. Before they could fall, Tony was there, wrapping his arms around her without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is the epilogue, the conclusion to all this tragedy and sadness, but even years after I initially posted the story I still like the ending, so I hope you all do too! Thanks for reading!


	21. Breathe, Everything Will be Alright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the final chapter! Hopefully it wraps things up in a satisfying, bittersweet way. I actually hadn't reread this story in its entirety since I posted it originally four years ago, but I did so now so that I could fix mistakes before I posted it here. Surprisingly, I'm still happy with the vast majority of it. Thank you all so much for sticking around and reading along, I hope you enjoy the conclusion!

_“How are you doing?”_

_“Hm?” Natasha hummed, not paying attention as the voice caught her off guard. She turned to find Clint standing on the porch, leaning against the doorway. There was a bottle of beer in each hand and a smirk stuck to his face._

_“I said,” he repeated and stepped away from the door to sit down in the chair next to her, “how are you feeling?” Clint passed her one of the bottles, which she took gratefully._

_Natasha shrugged as much as she could and sighed, looking out at the landscape. They were on the back porch of Clint’s house where the yard gradually vanished into the trees that ringed the property. Her injured leg was stuck up on another chair in front of her. It still stung and throbbed when she moved it, but she had been through much worse with much less comfort. “Doing alright, but getting better,” she replied honestly, nodding before she took a sip of the beverage._

_“I know, vodka’s more your thing, but I don’t keep too much hard stuff here,” Clint said, tilting his bottle towards hers in indication._

_“It’s the thought that counts,” Natasha joked back, though honestly grateful for it. She took a moment to look at Clint. His features were relaxed in a way she had seldom seen. He was in a normal t-shirt and a flannel, of all things (she would be sure to save that mental image), and he had this half-grin permanently stuck on his face. He just seemed so…at peace here, where there were no bad guys or guns or explosions._

_Natasha must have slipped up some by staring too long when Clint asked, “What? Stop studying me like I’m a freaking science experiment, Tash,” he said, almost quizzically before laughing._

_“Sorry,” was her quick and quiet reply before she dropped her gaze, only to look back to him. He was never like this out in the field or at the base. It made her wonder…why did he go back at all if he truly enjoyed it here so much?_

_She wouldn’t blame him if one day he decided to stay. Clint had a fantastic home, with a sweet and caring wife. Every morning he could wake up to a rooster or some other animal racket at an ungodly hour. He could watch the sun rise from his porch with a cup of coffee and spend the day working on the house, listening to the wind in the trees, or building up a life. He didn’t have to listen for enemy footsteps or work on cleaning his weapons. It was so much simpler._

_“Why do you do it?” Natasha finally asked after a few minutes of thinking it over._

_Clint chuckled and shook his head. “I’m no mind reader, you’re gonna have to be just a bit more specific.”_

_“This,” she cleared up, gesturing with her free hand to everything around them. “It’s so…peaceful and perfect, all apple pie and everything. Why do you go back to base? Why do you go on missions when this could be your life.”_

_“This is my life,” Clint replied immediately, “and so is the base and so are the missions,” he shrugged, taking another sip before leaning back in the chair. “It’s peaceful, sure, but you know me, Natasha. I can’t sit still. Being out there…it gives me something to do. It gives me some…greater purpose. Sure, it’s dangerous and noisy and sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night,” he shook his head, “but it’s worth it.”_

_“Why?” she asked quietly._

_“Because I’m helping people. I’m taking down some small amounts of evil in the world so people like Laura and everyone else don’t have to worry about it. It means I get hurt sometimes, or that I’m away from home for a little while, but I’m doing good in the world. It’s messy and it’s crazy, but most of the time it’s good,” Clint finished with a nod._

_Natasha sat in silence for a moment, comprehending his answer. His purpose was here, but it was also there, out in the field. She was probably one of the only people that knew the two sides to Clint Barton._

_“Aren’t you ever worried you won’t make it back home?”_

_He shrugged again. “Always. Laura and I, we’ve talked about it a few times, but not extensively, as you can probably imagine. If I do die, it’ll be helping people, and I’m okay with that,” he nodded. “But I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, so don’t think you can get rid of me that easily.” Clint chuckled and looked out at the expanse of land in front of them._

_The sky was starting to turn pink and purple with the sunset; the clouds seemingly set on fire by the receding light in the sky._

_“Other people, this place, Laura, they give me something to fight for, you know? So no, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”_

_Natasha cast another glance towards Clint, who hadn’t broken his gaze with the sky and the fields in front of him. Every so often, the beer bottle would be raised to his lips, but he didn’t say another word. Neither did Natasha._

_They sat outside long after the pink and purple had vanished. Eventually, Laura came out and curled up next to Clint, and together the three of them watched the stars dance on the black expanse of sky._

* * *

When Natasha found herself waking up, the first thing she registered was that her neck was sore. She craned it up, wincing slightly as it protested in pain. It took her a moment to remember why she was on the porch of the house once again.

They had all moved to the porch to be together, but out of the confines of the house. Afternoon turned to night, and soon everyone, including the kids, was sleeping outside on the chairs and couches, surrounded by the warm summer air.

Natasha sat up a little bit, a smile ghosting over her lips when she saw Laura with an arm around Cooper and Lila, the three of them lying on one of the lounges outside. Tony and Bruce were in the two-seater next to them, each of them with their heads hanging back onto the fabric. Thor was across from Natasha in a chair, his chin tucked into his chest.

It took her a moment to find Steve, eventually realizing that he was on the second lounge, seated next to Natasha. He had obviously heard her stirring, as he cracked an eye open to look at her.

“Everything alright?” he whispered, gradually waking up.

Natasha looked around at her sleeping family and nodded. “Yeah, just a dream. Didn’t mean to wake you,” she apologized.

Steve shook his head and propped himself up a bit higher. “I would’ve been up soon anyways. Sun’s almost up. We old men can’t sleep past sunrise,” Steve joked, always knowing how to bring a smile to Natasha’s face. “Good dream or bad dream?” he asked quietly.

“Good, for once.” The first good dream in a long time, in fact. Bittersweet to the very core, but good.

Steve nodded slowly, looking at her before turning his eyes to the world in front of him. “That’s good.”

“Mhm.”

They lapsed into silence, both of them yawning a few times as they woke up and waited for the others to do the same. They were all sore from sitting and sleeping in the chairs all night, but that wasn’t the only soreness in each of their souls.

After a few minutes, Steve began smiling as he looked over the sleeping Avengers and Bartons all out on the porch together. “Think they’ll be alright?” he said, not looking away from them.

Natasha took a few moments to answer his question. She pictured the tree in the forest with the freshly moved ground under it.

_“It’s worth it.”_

She soon found herself smiling too. Natasha watched the sun begin to rise over the quiet, shooting layers of yellow and orange over the blue sky and the green trees, just like she had so many times before. She thought about how many sunrises and sunsets she had seen from the house with Clint, either a beer bottle or a cup of coffee, or sometimes even a child in their hands.

“Yeah, I think so,” she nodded. “We’ll all be.”

It would take time. It would take healing and pain and learning and growing. They would never fill the hole, that much was obvious, but with time they would be alright again. They’d make it work. This was their life, after all.

The sun set, but then again, it always rose after a period of darkness.


End file.
